When Obama is President, let's make sure this question is answered.

[gridlore]

Why Has John McCain Blocked Info on MIAs?

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 people would logically imagine to be a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.

Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain's role in it, even as McCain has made his military service and POW history the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War have also turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn't talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.

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--probably hundreds--of the US prisoners held in 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.

If, and I repeat, IF this is even slightly accurate, then John McCain deserves to be reactivated and given a court-martial. We do not abandon our own. Under any circumstances. To do so is a gross betrayal of the men who trusted their government enough to serve it.

Of course, given McCain's disgusting record on veteran's affairs and supporting the troops I sadly can see where McCain could get off on leaving his buddies behind. He got his, after all.

Comments

[tsjafo.livejournal.com]

McCain's attitude may come from his father. McCain's father was part of the USS Liberty cover up.

Many, many airmen were lost during the cold war on reconnaissance missions over and near the Soviet Union. There were many reports of survivors. After the collapse of the Soviet Union information on these reported survivors disappeared.

Even during the Gulf War people disappeared. Lt. Cmdr. Michael S. Speicher's fate seemes to have been covered up by our government since the war.