Just Stop It: John McCain is Not a “Great Man” or a “War Hero”

by Scott Creighton (posted originally on July 20 2017 (cashed version))

News broke yesterday that Sen. John McCain is being treated for brain cancer. As a human being I feel for those close to McCain who are troubled by his illness. But I have no sympathy for John himself.

CNN, Rachel MadCOW, MSNBC, Fox “News”… they are all beside themselves today somberly singing the praises of the senator from Arizona, saying he’s a “great man” and a “war hero”
Noting could be further from the truth.

“I am a war criminal,” he (John McCain) confessed on “60 Minutes” in 1997. “I bombed innocent women and children.” Common Dreams, here.

John McCain is constantly referred to as a “fighter pilot war hero” because on Oct. 26th of 1967, he was flying a bombing run in his A-4 Skyhawk targeting civilian infrastructure (power plant) and got shot down. The A-4 is not a fighter jet. It’s designed purpose is that of a light bomber. Made for quick bombing runs on lightly guarded targets, the A-4 was used to drop things like napalm, white phosphorus and cluster bombs on civilian targets. He got shot down and landed in a lake where the same civilians who he was just bombing, saved his life. They decided against beating him to death and turned him over to police who gave him to the military.

It is said that John McCain remained a POW for 5 years and never broke, never betrayed his country. In fact, I have heard some go so far as to say his melanoma comes from that time as a POW.

Truth is, John broke quickly and denounced his country and even gave the Vietnamese important intel about flight patterns of his fellow fliers. That decision of his made his 5 year stay with his captors much more comfortable... and caused several of his fellow fliers to get shot down.

“I’ve never been tortured. I have no idea what I’d do. Of course, I’d like to think that I could resist or at least commit suicide before giving up information. Odds are, however, that I’d crack. Most people do. And so did McCain. “I am a black criminal and I have performed the deeds of an air pirate,” McCain wrote in his confession. “I almost died and the Vietnamese people saved my life, thanks to the doctors.” Ted Rall
—
“McCain had a unique POW experience. Initially, he was taken to the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison camp, where he was interrogated.  By McCain’s own account, after three or four days, he cracked.  He promised his Vietnamese captors, “I’ll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital.”
His Vietnamese capturers soon realized their POW, John Sidney McCain III, came from a well-bred line of American military elites. McCain’s father, John Jr., and grandfather, John Sr., were both full Admirals. A destroyer, the USS John S. McCain, is named after both of them.” DOUGLAS VALENTINE from CounterPunch

“Hero” McCain’s betrayal went well beyond giving into torture while he was injured (which ANYONE would do by the way). Apparently he became something like a Tokyo Rose:

“Not content with divulging military information, McCain provided his voice in radio broadcasts used by the North Vietnamese to demoralize American soldiers.
Vietnamese radio propagandists made good use out of McCain.  On June 4, 1969, a U.S. wire service headlined a story entitled “PW Songbird Is Pilot Son of Admiral.” (7)
The story reported that McCain collaborated in psywar offensives aimed at American servicemen. “The broadcast was beamed to American servicemen in South Vietnam as a part of a propaganda series attempting to counter charges by U.S. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird that American prisoners are being mistreated in North Vietnam.”
On one occasion, General Vo Nguyen Giap, the top Vietnamese commander and a nationalist celebrity of the time, personally interviewed McCain.  His compliance during this command performance was a moment of affirmation for the Vietnamese.  His Vietnamese handlers thereafter used him regularly as prop at meetings with foreign delegations.
In the custody of enemy psywar specialists, McCain became what he is today: a professional psywar stooge. DOUGLAS VALENTINE from CounterPunch

They kept him for 5 years because his father was in charge of Naval operations during the Vietnam war and because he was weak and a sycophant to power. In 2000, when he was running against “W” and the Cheney neocon Zionists who had plans for a “New Pearl Harbor type event”, Bush and his team smeared McCain’s family in an effort to gain the upper hand in the primary. In the end, John got on his knees again and backed “W” and Dick for the presidency much like Spineless Bernie Sanders did with Killary in 2016 after she stole the nomination from him.

This is a pattern that is repeated in his life over and over again.

While John was singing like a song-bird in Vietnam, hoping his father wouldn’t hear the recordings being played by the enemy to demoralize U.S. soldiers, his wife was dutifully waiting back home, raising his three children in his absence.

When he got back he discovered she was in a car accident, she lost 5 inches of her height, gained a couple pounds and didn’t look much like the swimwear model that he married, so the “great man” John McCain started cheating on her with his sugar moma and he later dumped her like one discards a broken ashtray. and Rachel Maddow was singing his praises last night?

“And he also showed incredible callousness to his first wife. She had stood by him throughout the time he was in Vietnam, but then she was in a terrible car accident that cost her five inches of her height and also led her to put on weight. And, while still together with her, he began pursuing Cindy, the heiress whose family would finance his political campaigns.
McCain’s team later tried to say that he was already separated from Carol when he began chasing Cindy. That’s not what everyone told me, and the L.A. Times account cites court documents indicating that that isn’t true.” New York Times

His first wife is better human being than he deserves:

‘My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens…it just does.’
Some of McCain’s acquaintances are less forgiving, however. They portray the politician as a self-centred womaniser who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to ‘play the field’. They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen, for financial reasons.” Huffington Post

In short, he was a scumbag who married a woman for her looks and when they were gone, he went out and got himself a new one.

He’s a piece of shit in other words… but Rachel Maddow just loves and respects him to death. Go figure.

John’s new wife Cindy started backing his political ambitions right off the bat. She had plans for him. He was the son of an admiral, a “war hero” and former POW… so how could he lose?

Of course, few people remember what “war hero and former POW” John “Straight Talk Express” McCain did to other POWS in the early 90s.

“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 who people would logically imagine as a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.” American Conservative, 2010

McCain torpedoed several bills designed to bring to light information about POWs still living in Korea Vietnam. From 90 to 95 he axed to pieces of legislation that many former POWs backed.
Some say it was because he didn’t want records on his own captivity to be unearthed. Others believe it had more to do with business deals he cut with Vietnam, fearing renewed anger toward the Vietnamese government could cause problems and even sanctions.
And then there is this:

“The Vietnamese love McCain because, as they said, he was the strongest advocate in normalizing trade with them in the late ’80s and early ’90s. McCain just had to silence that little MIA/POW problem to do it. Well, as it turns out, his wife’s fortune at the time stood to gain from that deal since her company went into Vietnam and set up breweries there. They made millions off that and she apparently did the same off “put options” just prior to 9/11. This is why Cindy refused to release her tax information previously. Oh, BTW, her company also has contracts supplying the troops with bottled water and other supplies… in Iraq. No wonder he wants them to stay. Did I mention John’s son works for the same company? So his entire family fortune is heavily tied to the Iraq war.” Scott Creighton, 2008

Whatever the reason, many believe U.S. soldiers were still alive and still in captivity in those countries back then… and John McCain squashed all efforts to bring them home.

McCain represents the worst of what complicit congress-critters have become in this country. He is a pure neoliberal, far-right fascist. He hates the poor, the sick, the disabled… but loves Big Business and the Military Industrial Complex.

Kinda reminds you of what he did to his first wife, right? A little glimpse into his character perhaps?
John McCain has never met a terrorist he didn’t like and try to do business with. Might explain his affinity for Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton and Lindsey Graham.

Here’s John hanging out with a neo-Nazi in Ukraine as we were regime changing that country.



Here’s that neo-Nazi giving a salute at one of his rallies. He’s actually a neo-Nazi. Not one just in spirit like John McCain is.. but a real one in fact.



Here’s a more convenient one.


Back when the war-criminals we installed in Ukraine were caught using cluster-bombs on civilian targets John said it was ok and maybe even our fault because if Obama had sent them other bombs, they could have used those on women and children instead. He really did say that.

In Syria, John the “hero” took a meeting with some rather unpopular people at the time. His deal was to go there and motivate them to keep fighting for our regime change operation in the country. Here’s a little peek at who he met with:




John McCain not only funds terrorists and serves as an apologist for neo-Nazi war-crimes and crimes against humanity.. he also does the same thing for us:



The bombing of the hospital that he was talking about was not an accident. It took place over a prolonged period of time and the doctors repeatedly tried to call the U.S. military to tell them they were being bombed and we did nothing to stop it. It wasn’t “fog of war”… it was specifically a war-crime designed to make the people in the area pay for supporting our opposition.
Back in 2015 John got pissed off because the Russians were bombing the CIA’s terrorist contractors. That was al Qaeda and al Nusra they were hitting and it made the “war hero” mad.

“Their initial strikes were against the individuals and the groups that have been funded and trained by our CIA, in a credible flaunting of any kind of cooperation or effort to conceal what (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s priority is — and that is, of course, to prop up (Syrian President) Bashar Assad. [I] can absolutely confirm to you that they were strikes against our Free Syrian Army, or groups that have been armed and trained by the CIA, because we have communications with people there.” John McCain

Some of those same terrorists we trained killed 3 Green Berets in Jordan back in December. Shot em dead in cold blood at a checkpoint.

News has just broken yesterday (along with that of John’s cancer) that President Trump has decided to stop funding the CIA’s terrorists in Syria. I guess John wont be around to go provide aid and comfort to his al Qaeda and ISIS employees.

Sen. McCain also seems to have a very low opinion of U.S. workers when it comes to Bush’s (and then Obama’s) Comprehensive Immigration Reform (a.k.a. “Cheap Labor for Big Business” bill):

Seems John doesn’t remember what this country did and can produce or what U.S. workers did for the billionaires he sucks up to every Goddamned day of his miserable life.

And John McCain, “hero”… “great man”… thinks we can’t pick lettuce or put a roof on a house? He’s an idiot or a liar or so out of touch with real Americans he just doesn’t know how insulting he is.
How insulting his entire life is.

I don’t think there is anything particularly heroic or great about Sen. John McCain.

He is the worst of us.

Again, my sympathies to those close to McCain who care for him. They don’t deserve grief anymore than any of the families of the victims of the terrorists he hired or the POWs he left behind.

But John himself? I hope he takes this as a message from God that he’s done enough damage to this world and should retire before time runs out.