McCain's Sniper-Gate: Lifted the 'Cross In the Sand' story from Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

[americanstranger]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/17/122230/161/239/569299

Now we can expect McCain to get hammered every bit as badly as Clinton did. Right? Right??

- as

[gateley]

1. It would have been more perfect if it had been a guard who drew the cross in

the dirt, rather than another prisoner - but it's still great!

[hisownpetard]

3. No such thing as "more perfect."

Just sayin'...


:hi:

[gateley]

18. At least I didn't say "more better". :-) nt

[hisownpetard]

22. It's "more betterer," but let's not pick nits!

[Poiuyt]

67. On the other hand, "perfecter" is a perfectly cromulent word.

[hisownpetard]

72. What a craptacular observation!

[jeff30997]

74. You win!

Your reply is the bestest!

[TexasObserver]

47. "In order to form a MORE PERFECT union."

Sound familiar? Think maybe it has something to do with our country's early days?

[hisownpetard]

73. That lanky guy you're referring to evidently never had an editor.

Still, he did pretty well for himself.

Good one!

:toast: :thumbsup:

[TexasObserver]

77. it's a pretty good line to know!

I do understand the principle you were upholding. Something is either perfect, or less than perfect. The term "closer to perfect" is the one that should be used.

I could just as easily have been the one who posted what you did. Now, that's irony.

[hisownpetard]

78. A tip of the proverbial hat to you for picking up on that. It really gave me a chuckle!

:thumbsup: :hi:

[hisownpetard]

2. This is unbelievable. I knew when he was telling it that it wasn't true, but I didn't realize he

had plagiarized the entire story. And, of course, he had it ready as an answer at the drop of a hat (since
I'm sure he knew the questions in advance).

This bit of truthiness should be EVERYWHERE. He should be made to apoligize.

Good job, americanstranger!

[americanstranger]

10. It was rickrocket at Kos who did the legwork.

I just posted the link. :)

But thanks anyway!

There's a debate in the comments for the Kos post as to whether this can be used against McCain, that we don't know for sure that it didn't happen to him, yada yada yada.

I say it's enough to cast doubt on all his POW stories. Remember, this is the guy who told the story for years about reciting the members of the Green Bay Packers when his captors wanted to know the name of his superiors - until he got to Pittsburgh one day...

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/07/in-pennsylvania.html

With this new story, all of his POW tales are suspect, IMO. Could go a long way towards wrecking the McCain/POW 'brand.'


- as

[formercia]

36. I wonder if the Vietnamese would release McCain's POW records.

There would probably be some interesting reading there.

[KittyWampus]

40. I also recalled that weird substitution from Pittsburgh

I agree with you

[hay rick]

68. steel curtain

This is a much more damaging story than possibly plagiarizing Solzhenitsyn...excellent!!

[chat_noir]

76. BWAHAHA! Freepers Call B.S. on McCain's Cross Story

DUer berni_mccoy's thread:


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6655455


Check out XemaSab's post

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=6655455&mesg_id=6655617

[Guaranteed]

60. A Vietnamese Christian Communist sounded a little odd to me as well. nt

[XemaSab]

4. AND that was his "response" to "What does it mean to be a Christian?"

WOW... what a question to LIE on! :o

[babylonsister]

5. From McCain's book...

doesn't mean he didn't pinch it, just that it's an oft-repeated (too oft!) story.

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/180/story_18033_1.html

In the months that followed, I occasionally saw my Good Samaritan when I was moved from one part of the prison to another. He never allowed himself a glance in my direction, much less spoke to me, until one Christmas morning, when I was briefly allowed out of my cell to stand alone in the outdoors and look up at the clear, blue sky. As I was looking at the heavens, I became aware of him as he walked near me and then, for a moment, stood very close to me. He did not speak or smile or look at me. He just stared at the ground in front of us, and then, very casually, he used his foot to draw a cross in the dirt. We both stood looking at his work for a minute until he rubbed it out and walked away.

For just that moment I forgot all my hatred for my enemies, and all the hatred most of them felt for me. I forgot about the Jerk, and the interrogators who persecuted my friends and me. I forgot about the war, and the terrible things that war does to you. I was just one Christian venerating the cross with a fellow Christian on Christmas morning.

[KittyWampus]

8. McCain's book is called "Character Is Destiny" published in 2005. WAY after Gulag Archipelego

[babylonsister]

14. I realize that, and I did comment that

he could have pinched/stolen it.

[Alcibiades]

55. Plagiarism in a book on character!

Compound irony.

[americanstranger]

23. I laugh at the irony of that article's title.

Considering that McCain took a life-long vow to 'hate the Gooks' back in 2000.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/02/18/MN32194.DTL

- as

[DefenseLawyer]

28. And then, as I walked back inside...

there, in the door handle... was a bloody hook! I mean come on McCain, if you are going to retell urban legends as your own life story, stick with the classics.

[KittyWampus]

31. LOL! would you do me a favor and start a thread like that

it pretty funny and damning to McCain

[demwing]

32. Compare to Solzhenitsyn's Story:

"As he waited, head down, he felt a presence. Slowly he looked up and saw a skinny old prisoner squat down beside him. The man said nothing. Instead, he used a stick to trace in the dirt the sign of the Cross. The man then got back up and returned to his work."

"As Solzhenitsyn stared at the Cross drawn in the dirt his entire perspective changed. He knew he was only one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. Yet he knew there was something greater than the evil he saw in the prison camp, something greater than the Soviet Union. He knew that hope for all people was represented by that simple Cross. Through the power of the Cross, anything was possible."

Also, were you all aware that McCain wrote a book about Solzhenitsyn? He's a big fan, apparently, and well aquainted with his work. :)

[babylonsister]

38. John McCain: Solzhenitsyn at Work

:rofl: From the book, "Hard Call". I wonder if this cross in the sand is discussed in the book? Back to google!

http://www.nysun.com/opinion/solzhenitsyn-at-work/83117/

Solzhenitsyn at Work
By JOHN McCAIN | August 4, 2008


He wrote diligently, comprehensively, profoundly, and in secret. Why? What good is a silent memory when the forgotten deserve justice? This way, he might avoid the despair of having his work confiscated and destroyed or the frustration of having his work rejected by publishers as inadequate or politically unacceptable. Worse, making public his work, his memories, might cost him the measure of happiness he then enjoyed. It might send him back to the Gulag. For whatever reason, he kept his work to himself and to his wife, Natalya. "During all the years until 1961," he wrote, "not only was I convinced that I should never see a single line of mine in print in my lifetime but also I scarcely dared allow any of my close acquaintances to read anything I had written, because I feared that this would become known."

He was a writer with unusual gifts, utterly devoted to his art, brilliant and exacting, producing work that would stun not just literary worlds but the entire Cold War political world, and he was resigned to being unread until "this secret authorship began to wear me down." Following Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 denunciation of Stalin at the Twentieth Communist Party Conference and the cultural thaw, Khrushchev encouraged at the Twenty-second Congress in 1961, Solzhenitsyn mustered the courage to send One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a fictitious account of one day's suffering in a poor peasant's life in a labor camp, to the literary journal Novy Mir. The magazine's gifted editor, Aleksandr Tvardovsky, recognized it as a work of genius, compared it to Tolstoy, sent it to Khrushchev for the premier's permission, and published it. Tvardovsky said that while reading the manuscript late at night "he was so moved by its power that he got out of bed, put on a suit and tie and sat up the rest of the night reading ... because it would have been an insult to read such an epic in his pajamas."

Solzhenitsyn decided to write, in seven parts, a history of the gulags, which were not first conceived, as popular opinion held, in Stalin's malevolent paranoia, but by Lenin himself, who in the earliest days of Bolshevik rule provided the legal justification for strengthening the party's hold on power by establishing slave-labor camps. Stalin, of course, had expanded the system beyond Lenin's vision.

The writing began in fits and starts. Another round of cancer treatment interrupted him. And he had doubts that, lacking any access to official records, his own experiences — what he "was able to take away from the archipelago on the skin of my back and with my eyes and ears" — provided sufficient material on which to base such an immense undertaking. He set it aside. But after the publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn began to receive hundreds of letters from Gulag survivors, and the letters and accounts obtained in conversations and memoirs from a total of 227 witnesses gave him the material necessary to complete the work.

In 1964, he began to work diligently on The Gulag Archipelago, writing sixteen hours a day in two eight-hour shifts. He completed the second draft in two and a half months, from late 1966 to early 1967. In the spring of 1968 he wrote feverishly to finish and microfilm the work in anticipation of sending it abroad for publication. On June 2,1968, it was done. One week later a friend carried the microfilm rolled in a capsule to Paris. Five years were to pass before it was published.

Solzhenitsyn had to make three decisions before The Gulag Archipelago and its truths, which were to wreak enormous damage on the Soviet system of oppression and hasten the demise of the entire postwar balance of power, would be available to the world. The first, of course, was the decision to write it. Even had the period of cultural liberalization in the Soviet Union lasted indefinitely, Solzhenitsyn's truths would still have greatly offended Stalin's successors. Among them were the accusation that Lenin shared culpability for the Gulag; and the recognition that the Soviet people themselves, not only Stalin and other Soviet leaders, must accept part of the responsibility for these crimes. His second decision was to send the manuscript abroad for publication, knowing that he would never receive permission to publish it in the Soviet Union. The third decision was to order its publication.

Each decision carried enormous risks for Solzhenitsyn.

This excerpt is drawn from "Hard Call: The Art of Great Decisions," (Twelve), which Senator McCain coauthored with Mark Salter. It is reprinted with permission of the book's publisher.

[cyndensco]

49. Damn, I wish it wasn't in his book!

Even if he did pinch it, he has said it before. Sounds like we have nothing.x(

Did you notice when they cut to cindy and the guy who he travels with (don't know his name, don't want to), they were both visibly moved? It appeared it was the first time they had heard the account. Must not have been...

[Spazito]

54. He DIDN'T say it in his 17 page VERY DETAILED account of his imprisonment ...

written in 1973. For an incident that was so life-changing that he "would never forget it", it is.....odd....that he forgot it in 1973 but remembered it in 2005.

snip

When I said that, the guards, who were all in the room—about 10 of them—really laid into me. They bounced me from pillar to post, kicking and laughing and scratching. After a few hours of that, ropes were put on me and I sat that night bound with ropes. Then I was taken to a small room. For punishment they would almost always take you to another room where you didn't have a mosquito net or a bed or any clothes. For the next four days, I was beaten every two to three hours by different guards. My left arm was broken again and my ribs were cracked.

They wanted a statement saying that I was sorry for the crimes that I had committed against North Vietnamese people and that I was grateful for the treatment that I had received from them. This was the paradox—so many guys were so mistreated to get them to say they were grateful. But this is the Communist way.

end of snip

Nothing about the Christian guard there



snip

Now I don't hate them any more—not these particular guys. I hate and detest the leaders. Some guards would just come in and do their job. When they were told to beat you they would come in and do it. Some seemed to get a big bang out of it. A lot of them were homosexual, although never toward us. Some, who were pretty damned sadistic, seemed to get a big thrill out of the beatings.

From that time on it was one round of rough treatment followed by another. Sometimes I got it three or four times a week. Sometimes I'd be off the hook for a few weeks. A lot of it was my own doing, because they realized far better than we did at first the value of communicating with our fellow Americans. When they caught us communicating, they'd take severe reprisals. I was caught a lot of times. One reason was because I'm not too smart, and the other reason was because I lived alone. If you live with somebody else you have somebody helping you out, helping you survive.

end of snip

Nothing there either.

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/2008/01/28/john-mccain-prisoner-of-war-a-first-person-account.html?PageNr=1

[cyndensco]

58. COOL!

Maybe we do have something! :applause:

[KittyWampus]

6. UPDATE: This story was actually excerpted from "The Gulag Archipelago" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, w

[DianeG5385]

7. A caller on CSPAN mentioned this morning that this came out of a 50s

biblical movie scene, can't remember which Spartacus? Looks like our little buddy is "embelleshing" his POW tale! What next?

[butterfly77]

12. The caller said from the movie Ben Hur..

[DianeG5385]

16. LOL, Do you think Solzenitzen(sp) pinched it from Ben Hur?

Just kidding!

[cyndensco]

51. Don't you love Washington Journal?

I scream at my tv every other call. My husband thinks I'm crazy for watching it.

[jobycom]

15. That might make it true.

McCain might have been Spartacus.

[shadowknows69]

20. I thought I was Spartacus

[starroute]

50. Maybe The Sign of the Cross (1933)?

I know it can't be Ben-Hur, since that has neither gladiators nor Christians. I don't know about Spartacus, but a little googling does turn up this description of a Cecil B. DeMille film from 1933 -- one of the last of its particularly lurid ilk from just before the Hays Code really cracked down:

http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=90102

When Titus, an elderly apostle of Christ, arrives in Rome to deliver St. Paul's message, he draws half of the sign of the cross in the sand, to which the Roman Flavius responds with the other half, after which they are arrested. Marcus Superbus, the prefect of Rome, intervenes and pardons them at the request of Mercia, a beautiful and virtuous Christian woman. Then Dacia, a courtier, reports to the Empress Poppaea, who is in love with Marcus, that he has fallen for a Christian. Tigellinus, who is Marcus' rival for Nero's devotion, sees his chance to prove that Marcus is disloyal by arresting the very Christians Marcus has pardoned. That evening, when Mercia sends young Stephanus to fetch the bread for dinner, Tigellinus arrests and tortures him to confess the whereabouts of the secret Christian meeting. ...

By the time Marcus arrives at the meeting, both Titus and Flavius have been killed. Marcus commands the troops to end the massacre and rescues Mercia, ordering that those still alive be taken to prison. Mercia is brought to the palace that night and Poppaea, determined to make Marcus forget Mercia, swears her love to him. Tigellinus then convinces Nero to make an example of Marcus by executing him for treason, but Poppaea intervenes, insisting his motives are not religious, but sexual. She then orders that Mercia be taken from him. Marcus, meanwhile, proposes to Mercia, but when she accuses him of wanting her only as his sexual slave, he curses her Christianity. Later, during a palace orgy, Marcus mocks Mercia's virtue by having the court temptress Ancaria perform a lascivious dance for Mercia in a futile attempt to arouse her. ...

The next day, thousands of Romans gather at the arena to witness the execution of one hundred Christians by lions, as well as a host of bloody spectacles planned by Nero to please the blood-thirsty crowd. As the barbaric audience cheers and makes wagers, gladiators kill each other, African pygmies fight half-naked amazon women to the death, and men wrestle wild beasts. The orgy continues as tigers devour maidens and gorillas and naked girls are tied to posts. ...

[sunnystarr]

82. Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ

"A Tale of the Christ" was the subtitle. I think it must have involved Christ and Christians.

[stevedeshazer]

9. I knew when Grampa said it, it was a lie

Thanks for the clarification.

[Spazito]

11. Geez, the real story is....

it was the guard who had just finished reading Solzhenitsyn and thought he would copy the actions from the book. It COULDN'T be the fly-boy, self-effacing POW hero plagiarizing, it just couldn't be, perish the thought!

:rofl:

[sniffa]

13. Can we get this to Keith, and the general media?

K&R

[DesertFlower]

17. didn't he use that in an ad

around christmas?

[americanstranger]

21. Sure did.

Another DUer posted on that this morning - because McCain's telling of the story doesn't jibe with the visuals of the ad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WTu7drLfRc

- as

[DesertFlower]

25. thanks. i thought it was different. nt

[Demi_Babe]

27. in that ad he uses a stick to draw the cross...last night he said it was a sandal

[KittyWampus]

29. What? the ad says stick and last night McCain changed it to sandal? HOLY CARP!

!!!

[cyndensco]

52. You are being sarcastic, right?

We have nothing here. I wish we did - I REALLY wish we did- but we don't.

Now, when he said early on he wanted to talk about the horrors happening in Rwanda.... maybe that displays a senior moment....

[Alcibiades]

57. He's a serial plagiarist

Every new one sheds more light on his character, which is, as we know, the most important thing we want in a president.

[sunnystarr]

83. Actually I think it was the other way around. (nt)

[Blue_Roses]

19. WOW! This is very interesting...

great find:applause:

[tomg]

24. I have to admit I am impressed by McCain.

Last week he ripped off Wikipedia. Now he is stealing from Solzhenitsyn. That is an improvement.

[jillan]

26. We need to k/r this to the top, so when

people like Randi, KO, Hartmann scan over DU, they will see this.

[me b zola]

30. I knew that story sounded familiar!

However, this story lies in a minefield. The reason the Bosnian sniper story had legs and did such damage to Clinton is that there were pics and reporters to prove that her account of landing in Bosnia was a lie. McCain's made-up pow story will never be repudiated with pics nor eye witness accounts.

McCain is a shameless, soulless douche bag. That being said, proceed with caution.

[demwing]

34. When did McCain first tell his story?

Before or after Solzhenitsyn wrote Gulag Archipelago?

If after, was it before or after McCain wrote his book on Solzhenitsyn?

If only after both those events, I'd say the man has a bit of 'splainin' to do :)

[Spazito]

42. Well, he certainly didn't tell it when he wrote a 17 page account of his POW...

experiences for US News and World Report in 1973:

snip

When I said that, the guards, who were all in the room—about 10 of them—really laid into me. They bounced me from pillar to post, kicking and laughing and scratching. After a few hours of that, ropes were put on me and I sat that night bound with ropes. Then I was taken to a small room. For punishment they would almost always take you to another room where you didn't have a mosquito net or a bed or any clothes. For the next four days, I was beaten every two to three hours by different guards. My left arm was broken again and my ribs were cracked.

They wanted a statement saying that I was sorry for the crimes that I had committed against North Vietnamese people and that I was grateful for the treatment that I had received from them. This was the paradox—so many guys were so mistreated to get them to say they were grateful. But this is the Communist way.

end of snip

Nothing about the Christian guard there



snip

Now I don't hate them any more—not these particular guys. I hate and detest the leaders. Some guards would just come in and do their job. When they were told to beat you they would come in and do it. Some seemed to get a big bang out of it. A lot of them were homosexual, although never toward us. Some, who were pretty damned sadistic, seemed to get a big thrill out of the beatings.

From that time on it was one round of rough treatment followed by another. Sometimes I got it three or four times a week. Sometimes I'd be off the hook for a few weeks. A lot of it was my own doing, because they realized far better than we did at first the value of communicating with our fellow Americans. When they caught us communicating, they'd take severe reprisals. I was caught a lot of times. One reason was because I'm not too smart, and the other reason was because I lived alone. If you live with somebody else you have somebody helping you out, helping you survive.

end of snip

Nothing there either.

I could find NO reference to this Christian guard anywhere in this VERY detailed account written in 1973 yet, in his book and last night in the forum it was a "life-changing" experience, go figure.

Link to the article:

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/2008/01/28/john-mccain-prisoner-of-war-a-first-person-account.html?PageNr=1

[me b zola]

56. After

McCain is a creep of the lowest order.

[AmericanUnity]

33. A RUSSIAN GUARD IS MUCH MORE PLAUSIBLE THAN A NORTH KOREAN - MCCAIN'S BUSTED!

[KittyWampus]

35. yes, yes he is.

[JDPriestly]

61. North Vietnamese -- and, did McCain say it was a prisoner or a guard

who did this? If it was another prisoner????

[Guaranteed]

63. He said it was a guard.

Yes- a communist.

[LostinVA]

79. Why? Probably more self-IDed Christians in North Vietman than the Soviet Union

Very strong Catholic influence in Vietnam.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

84. Wrong. The majority of Vietnamese were not Christian

And resentment toward French-speaking Catholics was high. Furthermore, the likelihood of a North Vietnamese being a practicing Catholic, even in secret, and assigned to a position as a POW camp guard is laughably absurd. Those guards would have been fierce Communist loyalists, and chosen for those tendencies.

[eleny]

37. Wait one day and he'll deny he said it and then forget he ever said or denied the whole thing

[eleny]

39. "It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham"

[hisownpetard]

41. I'll meet your travesty with a mockery and raise you 2 shams!

[Bolo Boffin]

43. "Seared In His Memory"

"I'll never forget that until the day I die."

[eleny]

44. Until he's called on it and starts yelling at clouds again

[BlueStateGirl]

45. Here or in the media? n/t

[AzDar]

46. K & R ...

:kick:

[Zhade]

48. Haha, snipergate is now in the lexicon. That's awesome.

That lie will never be forgotten now!

[Major Hogwash]

53. Well, there's no way to prove that it didn't happen.

I don't think the MSM will even look into it.

They'll ignore it so they can focus on blaming Russia for Georgia bombing Ossentia.

[Frank Booth]

59. If the media touches this, this will be their collective reaction:

"Come on! He was a POW! Have you ever spent 5 years in a Vietnamese POW camp?
McCain's got a well-documented history of being a straight talker and a maverick. Of course he didn't plagiarize this story, and even if he did, he had a right to plagiarize it because he was a POW, and he's a maverick and a straight talker.

Meanwhile, can we really believe Barack Obama when he claims he's a Christian?"

[Motown_Johnny]

62. Is there video of McGaffe's story being a lie, like Hillary's???

[mod mom]

64. I really hope Keith picks up on this-UFB!

[Political Tiger]

65. Maybe Pastor Rick should have reminded McBu$h

that the Bible says "Lying lips are abomination to the LORD: but they that deal truly are his delight."
(Proverbs 12:22)

[trashcanistanista]

66. I am stunned and in disbelief

that McCain has the intelligence to read Solzhenitsyn. This can't be true. It was lifted by one of his writers.

[C_U_L8R]

75. Exactly.. McCain didn't write his own autobiography

It was ghostwritten.... with McCain's blessings

[CampDem]

69. K & R

:kick:

[THale2]

I knew he was lying from the look on Cindy face

I watched the forum on CNN and they panned to Cindy's face and once McCain gave that response, she had an astonished look on her face as if she had said wow...like she never heard that response before...it seems to me, a story of that significance would have been mentioned to a spouse...I told my husband, I think he is lying because of the odd look Cindy had on her face as if that story was new to her...did anyone else notice that look on her face..

[THale2]

70. I knew he was lying from the look on Cindy face

I watched the forum on CNN and they panned to Cindy's face and once McCain gave that response, she had an astonished look on her face as if she had said wow...like she never heard that response before...it seems to me, a story of that significance would have been mentioned to a spouse...I told my husband, I think he is lying because of the odd look Cindy had on her face as if that story was new to her...did anyone else notice that look on her face..

[invictus]

71. I thought the "cross in the sand" thing was stolen from Ben Hur. BH predates Solzhenitsyn IIRC. n/t

[Willo]

80. Oh that ties in real well with hating gooks for the rest of his life.

:sarcasm:

Swiss cheese, Sieves and McCain '08

[sunnystarr]

81. Check out the Mark Nickolas's details on this issue from HuffPost

In June 2005, after Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) found himself apologizing for likened FBI reports of military tactics used at Guantanamo Base to techniques used in Nazi Germany, the Soviet gulag and Pol Pot's Cambodian "killing fields,” it was none other McCain who blasted Durbin publicly, offering this bit of advice during an appearance on Meet the Press:

"Senator Durbin owes not only the Senate an apology -- I don't know if censure would be in order -- but an apology because it does a great disservice to men and women who suffered in the gulag and in Pol Pot's killing fields. Dick Durbin should be required to read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 'Gulag Archipelago' and I think that he may have a better understanding that there's no comparison whatsoever. And it does a great disservice to the majority of men and women who are serving in Guantanamo who are doing the job that they're told to do and they're doing it in a humane fashion. To tar the American servicemen and women with a brush that applies to the gulag or the killing fields is a great disservice to the men and women in the military who are serving honorably down there."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-nickolas/did-mccain-steal-his-cros_b_119471.html

He also references DailyKos