McCain has been telling a story, at least since he wrote it in Faith of My Fathers in 2000, of substituting the names of the Green Bay Packers defensive line for his squadron mates when pressed by Vietnamese interrogators. It's a great story, as All-American as can be. He discussed it in 2005, when A&E did a movie version of the book, including the inspirational scene. Again in 2005, McCain used the story to illustrate how torture yields bad information. On July 9, McCain told the story again at a press conference in Pittsburgh -- only this time is was the Steelers defensive line.
Setting aside the rank stupidity of destroying a great piece of image work for a cheap hometown shout-out to a regional media market, this fib stabs at the heart of McCain's straight-talking war hero mythology. It's a breathtakingly brazen and completely unnecessary lie, at least as bewildering as Hillary Clinton's "sniper fire" silliness, except that Hillary wasn't running as a special forces agent. It calls into question every unconfirmed detail about McCain's POW years -- how many other stories is he just making up? And what kind of man would sully his service with such pointless embellishments? But, unlike Hillary's sniper snafu, McCain's Packers/Steelers switcheroo slid by largely unnoticed, chuckled at by the media momentarily and tossed away.
http://www.alternet.org/election08/94700/top_10_idiocies_of_the_general_election_..._so_far/?page=entireIt's time to bring this one up again, since Thompson just cited it again in his speech.
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