E-Answer.Net

Notice how many posters on this forum are incredulous that AMERICANS treat the overwhelming majority of POWs with deference instead of disdaining them for being captured? They are sent into apoplexy by the respect AMERICANS have for McCain and people like him, regardless of their voting preferences.



I think this is because they see the world from a different cultural perspective, one in which glory lies in death rather than in survival through perseverance with integrity; the individual and his or her inherent potential is of little importance to those with such a perspective.



I hope that the public, including undecided voters, notice this and consider why those with such perspectives---esteeming death in the interest of collective fatalism rather than individual potential---are so antagonistic towards Sen. McCain in their efforts to see another candidate in the American White House.

In December 1967 Day shared a cell with Navy Lt. Cmdr. John S. McCain III who was even more seriously injured and emaciated. Air Force Major Norris Overly nursed both back to life, and McCain later devised a makeshift splint of bamboo and rags that helped heal Day's seriously atrophied arm.



"He was horribly injured," Mr. Day, 80, recalled from Fort Walton, Fla., where he practices law. "He had a fractured right arm, his left arm was out of the socket, his right knee was fractured, and they'd bayoneted his left leg. The Vietnamese were trying to get him to make some antiwar statements, and he'd refused."



Hoping for a propaganda victory, the North Vietnamese were particularly determined to get a confession from Mr. McCain because of his father's status as a top Navy commander. Later, they even offered Mr. McCain early release - an offer he refused, like all other offers of special treatment, with obscene and bitter insults to his captors, his fellow prisoners have said.



Eventually, Mr. McCain succumbed to the agony and wrote up a confession to being a "black criminal" and "air pirate," deliberately lacing the stilted statement with Communist jargon and grammar mistakes to make clear it had been forced, according to a biographer, Robert Timberg.



"John McCain bent a little - we all bent a little - but he never broke," said Jack Fellowes, a retired Navy captain who was Mr. McCain's cellmate for the last two years of their captivity.



Little of the information their torturers extracted from the Americans was true, Mr. Fellowes said. Once, when Mr. McCain's tormentors demanded the names of members of his squadron, he supplied the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line - an act of covert defiance typical of the Americans.



On March 14, 1973, Day was released after five years and seven months as a North Vietnamese prisoner.



George Everett "Bud" Day is a former U.S. Air Force pilot who served during the Vietnam War. He is often cited as being the most decorated U.S. service member since General Douglas MacArthur, having received some seventy decorations, a majority for actions in combat. Day is a recipient of the Medal of Honor.

If you are very young I'm just going to tell to get off your parents computer and go to bed. If your not how dare you insult a veteran that went trough more hell than I can imagine just so you can have the freedom to be a dumb@$$. Go do something constructive with your life instead of wasting oxygen.

The military is on a need to know basis and only the highest officials have any relevant information. Since he was a prisoner of war for many years any information he would have had would have been irrelevant. So, I’m sure none.

I am going to take for granted that you are an Obama supporter. Only an Obama supporter ask such ignorant questions as this. You folks concern youselves with 'smear' when you are the originators of it. Pitiful.

This gets allowed but some good questions get deleted.



I don't think anyone with any intelligence would put this garbage on here.



The people who write this type of question are just not worth getting deleted over



It is just a sad commentary on the mental health of the world.

yeah, im sure if you were tortured for 5 1/2 years, you'd be telling that you dress like schoolgirl and like to get spanked.



i cant even fathom what kind of person you must be to even ask a question like that.

It is a shame that the sacrifices he did make are not taken seriously by people like you. How do you think you would handle what he went through. You really need to grow up and get a life.

I don't think you are qualified to comment on this subject. How much torture could you take (you surely can dish it out with your questions beeootch).

Well, my dad was serving in the navy on the same ship as him when he was captured and the ship came back without being bombed so....uh, NONE!

He probably told them don't f--- with me fellas. Don't you know who I am? I will be the President of the United States in 2008.

Quit using your dirty smear tactics to sanitize and make Obama look better, its NEVER going to happen.

Obama wouldn't last for five minutes let alone FIVE years.

he didnt tell anything at all.

You are really a low life..

you couldn't handle it so you have to insult it....

This is a joke. Yes?

you tell us. you were there, right?

I don't even support McCain, but how dare you belittle what he went through?!



John McCain's capture and imprisonment began on October 26, 1967. He was flying his twenty-third bombing mission over North Vietnam, when his A-4E Skyhawk was shot down by a missile over Hanoi. McCain fractured both arms and a leg, and then nearly drowned, when he parachuted into Trúc Bạch Lake in Hanoi. After he regained consciousness, a crowd attacked him, crushed his shoulder with a rifle butt, and bayoneted him; he was then transported to Hanoi's main Hoa Lo Prison, nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton".



McCain being pulled from Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi and becoming a POW on October 26, 1967.Although McCain was badly wounded, his captors refused to treat his injuries, instead beating and interrogating him to get information. Only when the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a top admiral did they give him medical care and announce his capture. His status as a prisoner of war (POW) made the front pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post.



McCain spent six weeks in the hospital while receiving marginal care.[Now having lost 50 pounds (23 kg), in a chest cast, and with his hair turned white,[McCain was sent to a different camp on the outskirts of Hanoi in December 1967, into a cell with two other Americans who did not expect him to live a week. In March 1968, McCain was put into solitary confinement, where he would remain for two years.



In mid-1968, McCain's father was named commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater, and McCain was offered early release.The North Vietnamese wanted to appear merciful for propaganda purposes, and also wanted to show other POWs that elites like McCain were willing to be treated preferentially. McCain turned down the offer of repatriation; he would only accept the offer if every man taken in before him was released as well.



In August of 1968, a program of severe torture began on McCain.McCain was subjected to repeated beatings and rope bindings, at the same time as he was suffering from dysentery. After four days, McCain made an anti-American propaganda "confession". He has always felt that his statement was dishonorable, but as he would later write, "I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine." His injuries left him permanently incapable of raising his arms above his head. He subsequently received two to three beatings per week because of his continued refusal to sign additional statements. Other American POWs were similarly tortured and maltreated in order to extract "confessions" and propaganda statements, with many enduring even worse treatment than McCain.





Interview with McCain on April 24, 1973, after his return home.McCain refused to meet with various anti-war groups seeking peace in Hanoi, wanting to give neither them nor the North Vietnamese a propaganda victory. From late 1969 on, treatment of McCain and many of the other POWs became more tolerable, while McCain continued to be an active resister against the camp authorities. McCain and other prisoners cheered the B-52-led U.S. "Christmas Bombing" campaign of December 1972 as a forceful measure to push North Vietnam to terms.



Altogether, McCain was held as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five and a half years. He was finally released from captivity on March 14, 1973. McCain's return to the United States reunited him with his wife and family. His wife Carol had suffered her own crippling ordeal during his captivity, due to an automobile accident in December 1969. As a returned POW, McCain became a celebrity of sorts.



McCain underwent treatment for his injuries, including months of grueling physical therapy, and attended the National War College in Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. during 1973–1974. Having been rehabilitated, by late 1974, McCain had his flight status reinstated, and in 1976 he became commanding officer of a training squadron stationed in Florida.

McCain is a coward and a traitor for getting shot down and spilling the beans on his country to the enemy to save his hide. McCain cowardly action is no doubt killed many American in Vietnam and play a big role in our defeat there. Obama is a true American hero for seeking the presidency to save America and the world.

...lmao... it sure is funny watching all these neo-cons get a dose of their own medicine... i have seen posts on this elections section depicting obama and his family as monkeys, and yet you all get worked up over this question...if mccain is such a great leader, then how the hell do you explain his becoming a p.o.w. in the first place?...what did he do wrong that he ended up getting caught?...