McCain covered up POWs and MIAs in Vietnam

[Doodler71]

I don't understand why this is not all over the MSM or on more blogs. It's abbhorent. It makes the Kerry swiftboat information look like a soft jab between friends.

McCain and the POW Cover-up
The "war hero" candidate buried information about POWs left behind in Vietnam
Research support provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute. This is an expanded version, with primary documents attached, of a story that appears in the October 6, 2008 issue of The Nation.

By Sydney H. Schanberg
September 18, 2008

John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn't return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero who people would logically imagine as a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.
(snip)
The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a special forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington—and even sworn testimony by two Defense secretaries that "men were left behind." This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number—the documents indicate probably hundreds—of the US prisoners held by Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain.

(snip)

The full article can be found here: http://www.nationinstitute.org/p/schanberg09182008pt1

About the author:

Sydney H. Schanberg, a journalist for nearly 50 years, has written extensively on foreign affairs--particularly Asia--and on domestic issues such as ethics, racial problems, government secrecy, corporate excesses and the weaknesses of the national media.

Most of his journalism career has been spent on newspapers but his award-winning work has also appeared widely in other publications and media. The 1984 movie, The Killing Fields, which won several Academy Awards, was based on his book The Death and Life of Dith Pran - a memoir of his experiences covering the war in Cambodia for the New York Times and of his relationship with his Cambodian colleague, Dith Pran.

For his accounts of the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, Schanberg was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting "at great risk." He is also the recipient of many other awards - including two George Polk awards, two Overseas Press Club awards and the Sigma Delta Chi prize for distinguished journalism.

I apologize if this has been covered, but I don't understand why this hasn't taken off. For a candidate who is building his campaign slogan on honesty, intergrity and loyalty to country and troops... people need to see what he really is a power grubbing politician that will sell out anyone. He will sell out his disabled wife, he will sell out his fellow soldiers, he will sell out his children, he will sell out our country.

[Waiting For Everyman]

1. Americans would rather find this out after he's President.

:sarcasm: Same with Palin, they'd rather find out the truth about her later too, after it's too late.

I agree with you, totally. It just isn't polite to say the facts. And there are some POWs and other vets on McC's side, who even though they know nothing about what he has done, insist on muddying the truth "swiftboat style". Evidently, the major news sources are afraid to take this on... even though there could be no greater expert on this than Schanberg.

They'll find out. B/c it's true. Same as it was with Bush/Cheney, after it's too late - oh, THEN everyone will be investigating everything. And it won't make any difference then.

It's beyond stupidity.

[Doodler71]

3. I'm so tired of being polite

He is indecent. He is a traitor to his fellow soldiers. All those Walmart chicken hawks who go on and on about him being a war hero and deserving to be the President, should choke on this.

I want this information out there. Pass it along, if the msm keeps having people mentioning it and it won't die.

[Tutonic]

2. Yeah consider this and what he said during the debate. He is one

sick being.

[Waiting For Everyman]

4. I wish too, that Obama and other Dems would stop calling him a 'hero'.

I wince every time I hear that. They could say nothing about it or something vague, but should not lie and reinforce his image.

[azul]

5. Obama won't go there until the media leads the way.

But he should't reinforce the hero notion by saying it. And this does require some investigative stories to find out just what the heck McCain was doing leaving all those POWs to some unknown fate, and pushing to end the issue.

And his stand ostensibly against all torture, except by the CIA is reprehensible. Like he said regarding talking about bombing targets in Pakistan, it's something you don't say in out loud, which says that he supports covert actions regardless of laws and ethics.

[johan helge]

6. If McCain's guilty, Democrats are also guilty, or?

From the article:

"The Pentagon had been withholding significant information from POW families for years. What's more, the Pentagon's POW/MIA operation had been publicly shamed by internal whistleblowers and POW families for holding back documents as part of a policy of "debunking" POW intelligence even when the information was obviously credible.

The pressure from the families and Vietnam veterans finally forced the creation, in late 1991, of a Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. The chairman was John Kerry. McCain, as a former POW, was its most pivotal member. In the end, the committee became part of the debunking machine.

......

For many reasons, including the absence of a political constituency for the missing men other than their families and some veterans' groups, very few Americans are aware of the POW story and of McCain's role in keeping it out of public view and denying the existence of abandoned POWs. That is because McCain has hardly been alone in his campaign to hide the scandal.

The Arizona Senator, now the Republican candidate for President, has actually been following the lead of every White House since Richard Nixon's and thus of every CIA director, Pentagon chief and national security advisor, not to mention Dick Cheney, who was George H. W. Bush's defense secretary. Their biggest accomplice has been an indolent press, particularly in Washington."

Is John Kerry and the Carter and Clinton administrations as guilty as McCain? If so, why?