McCain unmasked?

If this report is true, McCain's war heroism is about as fake as the war heroism of John Murtha and John Kerry. It may finish him as GOP candidate and hand the nomination to "flip-flop" Romney. I must say that I have always felt that McCain's account of his wartime experiences was not very credible. The stories always sounded exaggerated, as lies often do.

The author, Jack Wheeler, is highly respected and credible but it could still all be Soviet disinformation, of course. The key paragraphs:

John McCain, flying his A-4 Skyhawk, was shot down over Hanoi on October 26, 1967. Badly injured from the ejection, he was beaten and abused by his captors. In July, 1968, his father, US Navy Admiral J. S. McCain, was made CINCPAC, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command, commander of all US military forces in the Vietnam theatre. Upon learning this, the Vietnamese offered - according to McCain - to release him.

McCain claims he refused, because he demanded all American POWs captured before him be released as well. He thus remained a prisoner when he could have gone home, and was subjected to constant brutal beatings and torture for years: that is the source of the "war-hero" saga making McCain a greater war-hero than any other American POW.

Yet the offer of release would had to have been approved by the GRU [Soviet military intelligence] overseers of the North Vietnamese - and T does not recall any such offer being made. T admits, however, that this took place before McCain was transferred to Hoa Loa prison, nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton" by the POWs. T had only direct knowledge of what happened at Hoa Loa, and not the other prisons, where T's father was in charge.

McCain was kept at the Hanoi Hilton from December 1969 until his release, along with all the remaining POWs, in March of 1973. During this time, T translated all the Vietnamese interrogators' notes and reports regarding John McCain.

According to T, they reveal that McCain had made an "accommodation" with his captors, and in exchange, T's father saw that he was provided with an apartment in Hanoi and the services of two prostitutes. Upon returning to his prison cell, he would say he had been held in solitary confinement. That may be why so many of his fellow prisoners said later they saw so little of him at Hoa Loa.

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ELSEWHERE

I have just put up a new post on my Marx blog, which points out what a comprehensive hater Karl was. I have also recently put up a few new entries on my personal blog -- for what interest that might have. See here or here

Another little-known point about Marx: Das Kapital is one of the most influential books ever written but Marx himself lost faith in what he was saying there. He wrote only the first part of it himself (Vol. 1). He made notes towards the second and third volume but when he saw that history was not going in the direction he predicted, he ceased efforts to complete those volumes. Volumes 2 and 3 were actually written by Friedrich Engels with the assistance of Marx's notes and did not appear until after Marx's death!

An interesting endorsement: "The LA Times has endorsed John McCain in the GOP primary, and at least two of its reasons for doing so should give conservatives pause: the liberal paper likes McCain because he's weak on border fences and strong on global warming."

"Diversity" Money - Well Spent?: "In 2007 the University of Iowa increased its budget for the "administrative costs for affirmative action, diversity and multicultural programs" by 25%. "UI expects to spend $738,718 in FY 2007 compared to $589,018 in FY 2006." And what did all those "affirmative action, diversity and multicultural programs" achieve? "Non-minority students graduated at a 67 percent rate compared with a 57 percent rate for minority students, according to six-year-graduation rates from 2001 to 2007". But let's not harp on the half of the glass that's empty. I'm sure that the 43% who left school without graduating took great pride and satisfaction, while they were still at Iowa, in providing "diversity" to the white and Asian students."

A Muslim crook in the Pentagon: "Hesham Islam is responsible, according to earlier reports, for the firing of Stephen Coughlin, the Pentagon's only expert on Islamic law. But now the questions about Islam himself, and what his intentions really are, are increasing... Miss Rosett tried - and failed - to get straight answers from Mr. Wensing about why Mr. Islam claimed that when he was 7 his family was bombed by Israeli jets at his home in Cairo, when there is no evidence the Israelis bombed the Egyptian capital during the 1967 war. Also, Mr. Wensing could not explain why Mr. Islam said in his biography that he was on a freighter sunk by an Iranian torpedo in the Persian Gulf when there is no record of the ship being sunk. According to his 1992 master's thesis at the Naval Postgraduate School, Mr. Islam is highly critical of Israel and the influence of American Jews on U.S. politics, noting that U.S. ties to Israel have harmed relations to other states in the Middle East. [More on this matter here]

An important book on jihad: "Bostom, an associate professor of medicine at Rhode Island Hospital, has compiled a large collection of documents concerning jihad in his voluminous The Legacy of Jihad. Bostom's book amply documents the systematic and destructive character of Islamic jihad, refuting the much-repeated argument that jihad is a "rich" concept that has many meanings and that jihad first of all signifies "inner struggle." Jihad is first of all war, bloodshed, subjugation, and expansion of the faith by violence. The book implicitly devastates the fashionable but uninformed opinion that all religions are elaborations of the Golden Rule. Jihad is everything the Golden Rule is not"

Britain to get a conservative Catholic primate? "A monk in a remote Scottish abbey has emerged as a surprise contender to replace Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor as leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. Hugh Gilbert, 55, the abbot of Pluscarden Abbey in Elgin, Moray, has become a serious candidate to replace Murphy-O'Connor when he retires later this year. The ultimate decision will rest with the Pope, but senior church figures are said to have been impressed with Gilbert's orthodox views and leadership skills. For some time Rome has felt that the liberal drift of the bishops has failed to halt declining church attendance. Gilbert would represent a change in style because he is known as a traditionalist with dynamic qualities of leadership. He has presided over an expansion of his abbey and the founding of two offshoots in Africa and America. He is part of a very successful monastic community which is bursting at the seams. He is a quiet, scholarly monk who would probably accept the appointment out of obedience to the church. Vatican officials visited Pluscarden and are said to have been impressed with Gilbert's powers of delegation and the high esteem in which he is held within and outside the monastery."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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