Uncle Bob Digresses

Looks like I must eat the following words:

To my knowledge, there is not one - I repeat, not one - former POW who was interned at the same time as McCain who has a good word to say about him.

Chomp, chomp!

But as I have discovered, there are still other former POWs who say that he is a "lying skunk" so whom are we to believe?

There are many inconsistencies in the McCain story as told by McCain and his adherents. Perhaps the most obvious is his alleged torture by North Vietnamese interrogators, belied years later when his chief interrogator and presumably chief torturer, North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin, met him in Washington DC and they publicly embraced each other with apparent great affection.

There is also no doubt that McCain's willingness to spill the beans about his country's military and naval activities violated the Military Code of Conduct; a fact that his supporters whitewash with the excuse that everybody knew this stuff, anyway, so he was only telling them what they already knew. In my humble opinion, that does not make his blabbering less a crime.

Some McCain detractors describe McCain as the "Manchurian Candidate" and on second thought I should not have borrowed that phrase in my little essay about him. My own experience confirms that such alleged "brainwashing" is a Hollywood topic that should remain in Hollywood. The McCain who came out of prison camp after five and one half years of internment was essentially the same McCain who began the ordeal.

Nevertheless, it should be obvious to all except the most dim-witted that John McCain would never have become the Republican candidate for the presidency if it were not for his enormously ballyhooed captivity in East Asia, so in that sense he is the Manchurian Candidate, after all.

Uncle Bob