by Phillip Butler, PhD –

John McCain is a long-time acquaintance of mine that goes way back to our time together at the U.S. Naval Academy and as Prisoners of War in Vietnam. He is a man I respect and admire in some ways. But there are a number of reasons why I won’t vote for him for President of the United States.

When I was a Plebe (4th classman, or freshman) at the Naval Academy in 1957-58, I was assigned to the 17th Company for my four years there. In those days we had about 3,600 midshipmen spread among 24 companies, thus about 150 midshipmen to a company. As fortune would have it, John, a First Classman (senior), and his roommate lived directly across the hall from me and my two roommates. Believe me when I say that back then I would never in a million or more years have dreamed that the crazy guy across the hall would someday be a senator and candidate for president!

John was a wild man. He was funny, with a quick wit, and he was intelligent. But he was intent on breaking every USNA regulation in our 4-inch thick USNA Regulations book. And I believe he must have come as close to his goal as any midshipman who ever attended the Academy. I could tell many midshipman stories about John that year and he unbelievably managed to graduate though he spent the majority of his first class year on restriction for the stuff he did get caught doing. In fact, he barely managed to graduate, standing fifth from the bottom of his 800-man graduating class. I and many others have speculated that the main reason he did graduate was because his father was an admiral, and also his grandfather, both U.S. Naval Academy graduates.

People often ask if I was a Prisoner of War with John McCain. My answer is always “No, John McCain was a POW with me.” The reason is I was there for 8 years and John got there 2 ½ years later, so he was a POW for 5 ½ years. And we have our own seniority system, based on time as a POW.



John’s treatment as a POW:

1) Was he tortured for 5 years? No. He was subjected to torture and maltreatment during his first 2 years, from September of 1967 to September of 1969. After September 1969, the Vietnamese stopped the torture and gave us increased food and rudimentary health care. Several hundred of us were captured much earlier. I got there April 20, 1965, so my bad treatment period lasted 4 1/2 years. President Ho Chi Minh died on September 9, 1969, and the new regime that replaced him and his policies was more pragmatic. They realized we were worth a lot as bargaining chips if we were alive. And they were right because eventually Americans gave up on the war and agreed to trade our POWs for their country. A damn good trade in my opinion! But my point here is that John allows the media to make him out to be THE hero POW, which he knows is absolutely not true, to further his political goals.

2) John was badly injured when he was shot down. Both arms were broken and he had other wounds from his ejection. Unfortunately, this was often the case; new POW’s arriving with broken bones and serious combat injuries. Many died from their wounds. Medical care was nonexistent to rudimentary. Relief from pain was almost never given and often the wounds were used as an available way to torture the POW. Because John’s father was the Naval Commander in the Pacific theater, he was exploited with TV interviews while wounded. These film clips have now been widely seen. But it must be known that many POW’s suffered similarly, not just John. And many were similarly exploited for political propaganda.

3) John was offered, and refused, “early release.” Many of us were given this offer. It meant speaking out against your country and lying about your treatment to the press. You had to “admit” that the U.S. was criminal and that our treatment was “lenient and humane.” So I, like numerous others, refused the offer. This was obviously something none of us could accept. Besides, we were bound by our service regulations, Geneva Conventions, and loyalties to refuse early release until all the POW’s were released, with the sick and wounded going first.

4) John was awarded a Silver Star and Purple Heart for heroism and wounds in combat. This heroism has been played up in the press and in his various political campaigns. But it should be known that there were approximately 660 military POW’s in Vietnam. Among all of us, decorations awarded have recently been totaled as follows: Medals of Honor – 8, Service Crosses – 42, Silver Stars – 590, Bronze Stars – 958 and Purple Hearts – 1,249. John certainly performed courageously and well. But it must be remembered that he was one hero among many - not uniquely so as his campaigns would have people believe. Among the POWs John wasn’t special. He was just one of the guys.

John McCain served his time as a POW with great courage, loyalty, and tenacity. More that 600 of us did the same. After our repatriation a census showed that 95% of us had been tortured at least once. The Vietnamese were quite democratic about it. There were many heroes in North Vietnam. I saw heroism every day there. And we motivated each other to endure and succeed far beyond what any of us thought we had in ourselves. Succeeding as a POW is a group sport, not an individual one. We all supported and encouraged each other to survive and succeed. John knows that. He was not an individual POW hero. He was a POW who surmounted the odds with the help of many comrades, as all of us did.

I furthermore believe that having been a POW is no special qualification for being President of the United States. The two jobs are not the same, and POW experience is not, in my opinion, something I would look for in a presidential candidate.

Most of us who survived that experience are now in our late 60s and 70s. Sadly, we have died and are dying off at a greater rate than our non-POW contemporaries. We experienced injuries and malnutrition that are coming home to roost. So I believe John’s age (72) and survival expectation are not good for being elected to serve as our President for four or more years.

I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button.

It is also disappointing to see him take on and support Bush’s war in Iraq, even stating we might be there for another 100 years. For me, John represents the entrenched and bankrupt policies of Washington-as-usual. The past 7 years have proven to be disastrous for our country. And I believe John’s views on war, foreign policy, economics, environment, health care, education, national infrastructure and other important areas are much the same as those of the Bush administration.

I’m disappointed to see John represent himself politically in ways that are not accurate. He is not a moderate or maverick Republican. On some issues he is a maverick. But his voting record is far to the right. I fear for his nominations to our Supreme Court, and the consequent continuing loss of individual freedoms, especially regarding moral and religious issues. John is not a religious person, but he has taken every opportunity to ally himself with some really obnoxious and crazy fundamentalist minister. I was also disappointed to see him cozy up to Bush because I know he dislikes that man. He disingenuously and famously put his arm around the guy, even after Bush had intensely disrespected him with lies and slander. So on these and many other instances, I don’t see that John is the “straight talk express” he markets himself to be.

Senator John Sidney McCain III is a remarkable man who has made enormous personal achievements. And he is a man that I am proud to call a fellow POW who “Returned With Honor.” That’s our POW motto. But since many of you keep asking what I think of him, I’ve decided to write it out. In short, I think John Sidney McCain III is a good man, but not someone I will vote for in the upcoming election to be our President of the United States.

by Phillip Butler, PhD

Doctor Phillip Butler is a 1961 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a former light-attack carrier pilot. In 1965 he was shot down over North Vietnam where he spent eight years as a prisoner of war. He is a highly decorated combat veteran who was awarded two Silver Stars, two Legion of Merits, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Heart medals. After his repatriation in 1973 he earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at San Diego and became a Navy Organizational Effectiveness consultant. He completed his Navy career in 1981 as a professor of management at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is now a peace and justice activist with Veterans for Peace.


http://www.laprogressive.com/2008/08/25/why-i-won%e2%80%99t-vote-for-john-mccain/

My father was a POW in Vietnam as well. He will not vote for McCain for his own personal reasons that I know has a little to do with his pushing his POW status. Good read.

My father was a POW of the Japanese in WWII and he did not like McCain for using his POW status for political gain either.

Glad you enjoyed it

and the next BIG question...

why the heck would ya vote for nobama???????

Catwoman, why do you always resort to disrespectful name calling? I always refer to any of the candidates by name, whether it be John McCain or Barack Obama. Are you just trying to be funny?

I would vote for just about anyone who would not give us more of what we have had over the last 8 years. Obama is not a hero of mine nor my best choice. Can this country realy take more of the same failed policies of the last 8 years? what will be left to salvage?

i sometimes am trying to be funny. I think I was quite sleep deprived when i posted that,,
but still its kinda catch phrase

Mc Cain and Palin are the only choice left that makes any sense at all.

Surviving the next four years without adding to the confusion is the only hope for calmer heads and sound hearts.

Nobama is a traitor. He is bent on Socialism and big brother voodoo.

Less government and fewer entitlements in the only hope left for a runaway federal deficit.

The lesser of two evils is buying time to sort out the mess.

Nobama will only bankrupt the nation of talent and treasure, if in fact Pelosi doesn't hold him hostage from the floor of the Senate.

Let's be real America.

Not daft!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


nobama 2008.

the government has grown under Bush and our spending also, factor in the private contractors in Iraq and its huge how the government has grown. Personaly I think this Iraq war is just a snow job to make conected people rich

cleaning up the mess of using Osama and saddam to be our puppet warriors during the Cold War has cost plenty, indeed.

Saddam was fronted to weaken the Ayatollah after he seized Iran fronm the Shah because the AyaTOLLAH'S SON WAS EXECUTED FOR GRAFFITI scrawled on buildings in the streets of Tehran. The Ayatollah had been living in France up until that time.

The Iranian people, among most in the Middle East, do not take kindly to direct descendants of Muhammed being murdered.

Which brings us to Osama bin Laden, also a direct descendant of Muhammed. He served the US well fighting the Russians in Afghanistan and the Russians own version of Vietnam had us to thank for that defeat. Deja vu, aka the VC

But the late 80s brought things to a close under the stern leadership of Reagan.

Now, as for Osama, the muslim world will not give him up like they did Saddam, even though Saddam is a also a direct decendant of Muhammed.

Saddam was cruel and unusual towards those of the faith of his countrymen, whereas Osama is not such a man like Saddam.

Do the math and the due diligence aND LEARN FROM THIS NEW DIRECTION FOR YOUR THINKING ON THINGS AND WHY THEY ARE THE WAY THEY ARE.

America is the CLEANER!!!!!!!!!!!!!

period.


If you do not know history and people you will never understand anything foir what it is.

wake up America!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

you are being sold down the river on many levels.




nobama 2008

I suppose knowing history would include the fact that the CIA over threw a democracticly elected government in Iran and placed the Shaw in power in 1956 were he proceeded to build a police state and operate as bad or worse than saddam with american approval and spport, this being the main reasone iran over threw the shaw and took american hostages at the embassy.

wrong again.


the unions were the ones that riled the people of Iran in 1953.

That frenzy made way for the Shah to make an appeasement to the nation for a WHILE, and leave.

WHEN THE NATION REALIZED THEY WERE DUPED,(and way worse off for the trouble) THEY WANTED THE SHAH BACK.


So, go study the history of Iranian politics in 1953, first.

Then you might know what happened in 1956.

The Shah stood there in Tehran shaking his head at the people who had just a few years earlier ran him out on a rail while they chanted how great and benevolent the Shah was when they returned him to power.

Things are not what they seem without a few pointers. LOL


there was peace and prosperity in Iran, like no other in the region until the muslims got control of the country. The borders closed, the economy tanked and the population was forced into bongdage by the theocrats.

Today, the people want the theocrats gone, but the military will to overcome the regime in place is not strong enough. yet.

While a Muslim himself, the Shah gradually lost support from the Shi'a clergy of Iran, particularly due to his strong policy of modernization and recognition of Israel. Clashes with the religious right, increased communist activity and a 1953 period of political disagreements with Mohammad Mossadegh, eventually leading to Mossadegh's ousting, caused an increasingly autocratic rule. In 2000, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright stated:

"In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran's popular Prime Minister, Mohammed Massadegh. The Eisenhower Administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons; but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs."[1]

Various controversial policies were enacted, including the banning of the Tudeh Party and a general suppression of political dissent by Iran's intelligence agency, SAVAK. Amnesty International reported that Iran had as many as 2,200 political prisoners in 1978. By 1979, political unrest had transformed into a revolution which, on January 16, forced the Shah to leave Iran after 37 years of rule. Soon thereafter, the revolutionary forces transformed the government into an Islamic republic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi

getting warmer...

keep digging.





ps....was Eisenhower a republican?

and didn't he also get us involved in Vietnam to help the french? in that same year? 1956?

oops.

and Kennedy? was he a republican? didn't he escalate tensions in Vietnam?

and why were LBJ's hands tied?


these are democrats that make these messes, son.


w3hich brings us toi the emasculated inept years of Carter in 1979...when the shah was lied to and abandoned by the Carter administration against promises...on and on it goes that democrats make the messes that republicans must clean up when they scamper for the dark in shame for having blundered.



Now then, Albright was Clinton's pick. another democrat that cannot see straight.

she has been scolded by those in the know publicly for her inept handling and revisionism of history to justify her actions. another democrat making a bad mess worse. and lying about it too. keep digging.

more democrats involved...

Sure the gulf of tolkin was a fake attack that led to the escalation of vietnam so there is some things that apply to Iraq. but not much else

30-year Anniversary: Tonkin Gulf Lie Launched Vietnam War


Media Beat (7/27/94)

By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon


Thirty years ago, it all seemed very clear.

"American Planes Hit North Vietnam After Second Attack on Our Destroyers; Move Taken to Halt New Aggression", announced a Washington Post headline on Aug. 5, 1964.

That same day, the front page of the New York Times reported: "President Johnson has ordered retaliatory action against gunboats and 'certain supporting facilities in North Vietnam' after renewed attacks against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin."

But there was no "second attack" by North Vietnam — no "renewed attacks against American destroyers." By reporting official claims as absolute truths, American journalism opened the floodgates for the bloody Vietnam War.

A pattern took hold: continuous government lies passed on by pliant mass media...leading to over 50,000 American deaths and millions of Vietnamese casualties.

The official story was that North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an "unprovoked attack" against a U.S. destroyer on "routine patrol" in the Tonkin Gulf on Aug. 2 — and that North Vietnamese PT boats followed up with a "deliberate attack" on a pair of U.S. ships two days later.

The truth was very different.

Rather than being on a routine patrol Aug. 2, the U.S. destroyer Maddox was actually engaged in aggressive intelligence-gathering maneuvers — in sync with coordinated attacks on North Vietnam by the South Vietnamese navy and the Laotian air force.

"The day before, two attacks on North Vietnam...had taken place," writes scholar Daniel C. Hallin. Those assaults were "part of a campaign of increasing military pressure on the North that the United States had been pursuing since early 1964."

On the night of Aug. 4, the Pentagon proclaimed that a second attack by North Vietnamese PT boats had occurred earlier that day in the Tonkin Gulf — a report cited by President Johnson as he went on national TV that evening to announce a momentous escalation in the war: air strikes against North Vietnam.

But Johnson ordered U.S. bombers to "retaliate" for a North Vietnamese torpedo attack that never happened.

Prior to the U.S. air strikes, top officials in Washington had reason to doubt that any Aug. 4 attack by North Vietnam had occurred. Cables from the U.S. task force commander in the Tonkin Gulf, Captain John J. Herrick, referred to "freak weather effects," "almost total darkness" and an "overeager sonarman" who "was hearing ship's own propeller beat."

One of the Navy pilots flying overhead that night was squadron commander James Stockdale, who gained fame later as a POW and then Ross Perot's vice presidential candidate. "I had the best seat in the house to watch that event," recalled Stockdale a few years ago, "and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets — there were no PT boats there.... There was nothing there but black water and American fire power."

In 1965, Lyndon Johnson commented: "For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there."

But Johnson's deceitful speech of Aug. 4, 1964, won accolades from editorial writers. The president, proclaimed the New York Times, "went to the American people last night with the somber facts." The Los Angeles Times urged Americans to "face the fact that the Communists, by their attack on American vessels in international waters, have themselves escalated the hostilities."

An exhaustive new book, The War Within: America's Battle Over Vietnam, begins with a dramatic account of the Tonkin Gulf incidents. In an interview, author Tom Wells told us that American media "described the air strikes that Johnson launched in response as merely `tit for tat' — when in reality they reflected plans the administration had already drawn up for gradually increasing its overt military pressure against the North."

Why such inaccurate news coverage? Wells points to the media's "almost exclusive reliance on U.S. government officials as sources of information" — as well as "reluctance to question official pronouncements on 'national security issues.'"

Daniel Hallin's classic book The "Uncensored War" observes that journalists had "a great deal of information available which contradicted the official account [of Tonkin Gulf events]; it simply wasn't used. The day before the first incident, Hanoi had protested the attacks on its territory by Laotian aircraft and South Vietnamese gunboats."

What's more, "It was generally known...that `covert' operations against North Vietnam, carried out by South Vietnamese forces with U.S. support and direction, had been going on for some time."

In the absence of independent journalism, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution — the closest thing there ever was to a declaration of war against North Vietnam — sailed through Congress on Aug. 7. (Two courageous senators, Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska, provided the only "no" votes.) The resolution authorized the president "to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression."

The rest is tragic history.

Nearly three decades later, during the Gulf War, columnist Sydney Schanberg warned journalists not to forget "our unquestioning chorus of agreeability when Lyndon Johnson bamboozled us with his fabrication of the Gulf of Tonkin incident."

Schanberg blamed not only the press but also "the apparent amnesia of the wider American public."

And he added: "We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth."

[Return to Media Beat archive]

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Gulf of Tonkin. 1964. LBJ. Democrat, prior to election. Remeber, he took over Kennedy's term til January 1965.


Back to Iraq.

Saddam rose to power after the Shah of Iran was ousted into exile in 1979.

Saddam had run the secret police and had the levers of the military and had built an espionage network within Iraq.

The US enlisted his help to stave off an iranian incursion into Iraq in the 80s.

When Saddam got too powerful and threatened to destabilize Iran and invade, the US blockaded his resupply route in the Persian Gulf.

That simple logistical blockade forced Saddam to capitulate and retreat from invading Iran, which he was NOT supposed to do EVER!!!!!

The idea was, to secure borders and keep confligrations within national borders.

This is at the heart of international diplomacy efforts to prevent another world war.


All of this is highly relevant and very much linked together.

Keep digging....

nobama 2008

no democrats in the White House.

Ever Again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

they cost too much in future wars we all have to pay for.

Let's clean up the messes left by the liberal left and their phony machinations and keep the world safe from democrats and socialists forever.

The sooner , the better.

There is one thing I will say. In that statement there is nothing about him betraying our country to get treated better like some are saying.

NOT even close to the reality of what we need in this country.

McCain and Palin will destroy this country and all of the working poor in this country will suffer greatly if they get into office.