Saturday, September 27, 2008

The Unnoticed Lie

Toward the end of the debate, John McCain said the following, with the emphasis added my me,
Jim, when I came home from prison, I saw our veterans being very badly treated, and it made me sad. And I embarked on an effort to resolve the POW-MIA issue, which we did in a bipartisan fashion, and then I worked on normalization of relations between our two countries so that our veterans could come all the way home.

The first underlined part of that statement can be considered true only if you consider a vigorous and unrelenting effort to obstruct having them found as "resolving the issue."

As the families of the missing soldiers came to Washington to seek help in finding out what had happened to their loved ones, what had happened to their fathers and their sons, what they got from John McCain was not an "effort to resolve" the issue, what they got was open and angry hostility. McCain's attitude on the issue raised the ire of VietNam veterans groups to the degree that they began calling him the "Manchurian Senator."

As to the second underlined part, I think he's trying to sound noble with that, like allowing VietNam vets to finally be reach some sort of inner peace as the two nations reach national peace. The only problem is that VietNam veterans were pretty much united in their opposition to having this done, and when he espoused that cause they felt that McCain had betrayed them and that he was reopening old wounds. When vets confronted him he attacked them because they had not gone through as much hardship as he had, hadn't suffered like he had, which, of course, didn't make them like him any better.

The IAVA and The Disabled Vets of America will both disagree with his earlier statement,
I know the veterans. I know them well. And I know that they know that I'll take care of them. And I've been proud of their support and their recognition of my service to the veterans.And I love them. And I'll take care of them. And they know that I'll take care of them.

I'm not going to bother with his voting record in the Senate over the past twenty-six years; it's well known and unrelentingly hostile to veterans' care. But veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan should take some comfort,

They are not the first veterans to be betrayed by John Sidney McCain.

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