By Mychal Massie on July 30, 2015 in Daily Rant
Donald Trump is to be commended for exposing the lies, liars, and frauds in the media and specifically in Congress. Which is one of the two reasons he is being assailed. The last thing party leaders and those in elected office want We the People to know is that they are liars, frauds, and more egregiously, that they are singularly interested in their own affairs which do not include the affairs that are of concern to you and me.
Trump caused a furor when he condescendingly said: “[John McCain] is a war hero because he was captured, I like people who weren’t captured, I hate to tell you.” Apparently the media and McCain’s Congressional sycophants forgot that General Wesley Clark made the same remarks almost verbatim during McCain’s failed presidential campaign.
A close friend said it best when he stated “every president, vice president and secretary of state since President Nixon had to be complicit in covering up and concealing the truth about McCain’s embellished and at times fictional military record.”
McCain has basked in the vestiges of being recognized as a war hero; a POW who spent five and a half years in a North Vietnamese prison enduring torture on a routine basis. The truth, however, is quite different, and McCain needed to be exposed to the American people not as the “maverick” he relishes being called, but for the charade he is.
“McCain was not a fighter pilot, although in later years the media would perpetuate the mistaken belief that he was. Trained as an A-4 bomber pilot, he was assigned to the attack squadron VA-163.” (The Day John McCain Got Shot Down by Zalin Grant)
“A lot of pilots were not…enthusiastic about McCain. They were not really convinced that he had the right stuff. Navy aviation was a small, tightly-knit community made up of highly-trained men with large egos and a fiercely competitive nature. Even if they did not know each other personally, everybody was linked together via the gossip hotline, and McCain’s reputation had preceded him to the Oriskany…McCain’s grandfather had been a highly decorated admiral in World War II. His father, John S. McCain II, also an admiral” was “soon to become commander-in-chief of all forces in the Pacific, making him the highest ranking officer in the Vietnam War.”
Zalin Grant further reported: “McCain had acted as though he was determined to show all those who were inclined to think the worst of him that they were right.” McCain himself wrote in his book Faith of My Fathers: “I did not enjoy the reputation of a serious pilot or an up-and-coming junior officer.”
His record as a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy was abysmal. He piled up demerits…for breaking the rules, and barely passed his schoolwork, graduating 894th in a class of 899.” After McCain left the Academy he continued to show the same attitude that would have resulted in flunking out or led to his being expelled from the Academy if not for his “silver-spoon” military lineage. “He barely passed flight school…he crashed two airplanes and damaged a third.”
An investigation into the first crash caused investigators to openly question McCain’s version of what happened and to leave open the possibility of “pilot error.” There was also what was to be considered to be the worst U.S. Navy accident since World War II aboard the USS Forrestal, which resulted in 134 sailors dying, and many others seriously burned. It was the fourth serious accident involving McCain since his becoming a pilot. “His reputation for being a hotdog – a show-off pilot who broke the rules – led to rumors that McCain had caused the fire by trying to scare the pilot behind him by suddenly shooting flames out of his tail exhaust. [While] there was no evidence McCain was at fault…the rumors persisted….McCain also developed a reputation for volatility…He had a quick temper and was prone to flare up over minor incidents.”
The civilian public has little if any comprehension of how well trained and gifted these pilots were and are. Ergo, what the public believes based upon lack of knowledge is far different from what these pilots factually know and expect from one another. Grant wrote: “To the American public, every pilot brought down by enemy fire was a hero; but carrier pilots made a sharp distinction between someone who was unavoidably shot down and a pilot who simply made a mistake.”
The facts surrounding McCain being shot down and captured are not those of a hero but of a self-absorbed “idiocrat” whose pattern of misconduct caught up with him. Here again Grant provides factual insight into what took place. After supposedly being hit by a SA-2 (SAMs) fire, McCain by his own admission: “failed to follow instructions in combat.”
But was he actually hit by SAMs? “The pilots flying near him, one of them with a handheld camera, said [McCain] was not hit by a SAM. He had flown too low and was brought down by a barrage of antiaircraft (AAA) fire…And since official Navy records listed McCain as downed by AAA fire, they were puzzled by why McCain later insisted in his political campaigns that it was a SAM.”
McCain made another critical error in the seconds immediately after being hit. He failed to use the proper procedure he had been taught for ejecting. As a result, he injured himself critically, breaking both arms and his right leg.
McCain has used his misdeeds and poor decision making to transform himself into a national war hero. The truth is that his cockpit alarm signaled him of incoming fire giving him plenty of time to respond according to evasive training but McCain ignored proper procedure. It is important to note that while McCain was assaulted upon being on the ground, both “the Vietnam Government and an American veteran living in Hanoi confirmed years later that, Mai Van On, 49, a Hanoi resident ran from the safety of his bomb shelter and with the help of a neighbor tossed bamboo poles in the water and swam out to rescue McCain. Mai Van On and his friends floated McCain to shore where they were confronted by an angry mob which wanted to kill the American.” Mai Van On and his friends were able to save McCain but not before the mob further injured McCain.
McCain was unusually candid, (albeit I suspect for self-serving reasons), in admitting the injuries sustained in his poorly performed ejection drove him to try to bargain with his prison interrogators.
That McCain was beaten and tortured is true. But by his own admission in his book “Faith of My Fathers” he believed his treatment was less harsh than what the other POWs suffered. He attributed his being treated less cruelly than the other POWs because the Vietnamese knew who his father and grandfather were. He went so far as to confirm the other POWs “endured far worse than [he] had, and withstood the cruelest torture imaginable.”
But McCain went on to benefit from his own mistakes as a pilot when his political career took off. He benefited enormously from his self-sustained and avoidable ejection injuries. The television shots of him on crutches and bandages told a far different story than the truth did – and the American public bought the lies.
That McCain gave his captors information in exchange for easier treatment is not in question. The extent to which he personally benefited from same while being held varies only slightly. I had a full-bird colonel personally tell me several years ago that McCain enjoyed the company of prostitutes, drugs, and drinks while his countrymen were truly suffering as POWs. Variations of this account continue until today.
“Another public misperception arose concerning McCain’s refusal of an early release offered to him by the North Vietnamese. In reality, John McCain was not the singular POW who, as Time magazine wrote, languished in prison in Hanoi for years rather than accept a release he considered dishonorable…This was not about [his] honor, as he later made it appear, or about his personal struggle as to whether to accept an early release.”
His self-described anguish pursuant to whether or not to take an early release was not his decision to make, that decision was left to Air Force Colonel Ted Guy – unless of course, he had chosen to violate regulations and put himself at risk for future censure.
As referenced earlier, my friend’s observation was spot on. Everyone including the media is aware of McCain’s faux hero status. Yet they ignore it. Meanwhile the politicians and the media lavish McCain with recognition he is wholly unworthy of receiving.
The pernicious calumniators are guilty of misleading the public. But Donald Trump has changed that dynamic. He has forced the conversation and the politicos are outraged because the last thing any of them want is the truth told.
As I said to my friend: How does it make you feel to now be unavoidably confronted with the truth that you have been lied to and misled? Venal marplots have exploited you no less than pimps exploit prostitutes who are foolish enough to believe they have no choice and are afraid to take control of their destiny.
Think about it. Every single pundit attacking Donald Trump is attacking him for telling the truth. Since when did telling the truth become an indictable offense? Isn’t the truth what so-called conservatives constantly blather about? The politicos do not want the truth made known because the truth will set you free and the last thing either political party wants is for you and I to be free.
I have another question for so-called conservatives. If Fox News is such an advocate for conservative values and so “fair and balanced” why haven’t they told the truth about McCain, et al? Why does a President Reagan hating liberal pretending to be conservative Charles Krauthammer call Trump boorish, i.e., vulgar and common instead of praising Trump as a truth teller?
Trump is being attacked for speaking the truth about illegal aliens, McCain, and both political parties. Shouldn’t that tell you the voters something isn’t right if the party of your choice is fighting to conceal the truth? What will it take for you to realize that politicians are not our friends?
What will it take for you to realize that politicians are there to serve our interests; they are not there to thumb their noses at us? When will you realize that Fox News is nothing more than a jaundiced and invidious camarilla whose sole function is to validate the aberrant hebephrenic behavior of politicians? Or doesn’t it matter to you that you have been lied to? Let’s face it, if politicians and the media from the president to the lowest ranking politico know the truth about McCain and chose to prostitute the lie – they did it because they know you aren’t smart enough to understand you’re being lied to. And to insure that pattern continues they will attack Trump, telling you he is wrong for speaking truth. They know that if they say it enough you will turn on him as you did Herman Cain and Sarah Palin