By Thomas Madison

“Thank you” to all of the Powdered Wig readers who are sending me background material on this topic. It turns out that Donald Trump was spot on in his assessment of John McCain as NOT a war hero. More detail comes streaming in by the hour.

Now it is clear why McCain blocked release of POW records. He didn’t want his own to be made public. It also explains why McCain is so eager to abandon this feud with Trump and “move on.” I’m certain John McCain regrets ever bashing Donald Trump.

The Donald has opened McCain’s closet and the contents are not pretty!

Article updated, October 13, 2017, below, in bold.

Over the weekend, “the Donald” backed down on his attacks on McCain, calling “Hanoi John” a “war hero.”However, Donald is not going to be able to close the can of worms he opened. Today, McCain is trying to wrap himself in the POW flag for cover. POWs had never been rock star heroes before, quite the opposite. These are people who surrendered to the enemy, people suspected of collaboration and worse. With Korea, POWs became the shame of America with many “brainwashed” into following communist doctrines. American POWs from Vietnam were the bloody flag Richard Nixon wrapped himself in, on the advice of Henry Kissinger, part of a ploy to divert attention from his endless personal failings which included his agreement with North Vietnam that let them keep and later execute hundreds of American POWs. 1205 American POWs were kept by North Vietnam according to records recovered at the end of the Cold War. Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin instituted a search of Russia’s gulags looking for their remains with no success. In 1993, armed with testimony from a former high ranking Czech security official, I proposed a systematic search of archives in Prague that recorded the fate of 200 missing US POWs from Vietnam but was blocked by Senator John McCain. 33 POWs faced execution for treason after Vietnam until Nixon pardoned all POWs. McCain was on the list of the 33, in fact at the head of it. Here are the facts as we know them:

  • According to Colonel Ted Guy, John McCain’s commander as a POW, McCain collaborated with the enemy.
  • McCain is accused of giving information that led to the downing of 60 US aircraft
  • McCain is accused of training North Vietnamese air defense personnel
  • McCain is accused of making over 30 propaganda broadcasts against the US, broadcasts he moved to have classified when he was elected to the Senate

These 4 accusations are the only real and supportable accusations against McCain. The evidence for these acts exists and is substantial. What is stranger still is McCain’s longtime war against veterans, other POWs and their families.  When John was a bit younger and better capable of looking after himself, he was often both verbally and physically abusive to POW families, POW activists and veterans. We hear nothing of these brutal outbursts of McCain’s though they continue to this day, now taken as the ravings of a mental defective.

The door Donald opened should be kept open. We need to examine the POW phenomenon. After Vietnam, we allowed Nixon to glorify POWs while abandoning hundreds. The facts came to light during the late 1990s when tapes of conversations between Nixon and Kissinger were made public, for moments, with Kissinger admitting that American POWS held outside North Vietnam, in Laos, Cambodia and the South, were purposefully not included in the agreements, a number Kissinger put at over 200.

These tapes were cleaned from the media and are not available to even researchers, were such interested parties to exist, which they do not.

Vietnam was a useless war.  I served in Vietnam as a Marine combat infantryman and know the war well close up.

Those of us that served felt abused and exploited and suffered far worse at the hands of Nixon and subsequent leaders who backed away from those of us who served as honorably as possible while engaging in a nutty frenzy of POW worship.

Trump is right, those who surrender are generally not heroes.  Some were, however, like Ted Guy, a man taken on the ground fighting, killing 4 of his captors.

Guy, however, is only one of many thousands, many many thousands, from Vietnam that should have received some aspect of recognition in a war where many more thousands lived like gods. Vietnam was a scam, drugs, prostitution, black market, the best food and hottest parties in the world for many who came home from the war with medals on their chests for doing nothing whatsoever.

I might add, the Saigon press club war correspondents were the worst of all, living like kings on little boys and little girls while being occasionally flown for “10 minutes of war” with a general, then back to the clubs and brothels.  They all should have been locked in FEMA camps, were such things to exist.

As for the Donald, he should demand that, minimally, the American public be able to hear McCain’s broadcasts and see the records of his debriefing and read the statements made against him by other POWs, including and especially Colonel Ted Guy.

Read more….

Another point often made as evidence of McCain’s special treatment by the North Vietnamese is the fact that upon release from capture, McCain was cheerful and in good, robust health, showing no signs of the starvation and abuse routinely suffered by his fellow POWs, who, in comparison to McCain, were very weak and emaciated upon release.

More of the truth regarding Songbird McCain from an earlier Powdered Wig article…. Trump is right. John McCain is no hero!

UPDATE – October 13, 2017: Previously, Powdered Wig included an update to this article which claimed that John McCain was responsible for the 134 deaths aboard the USS Forrestal in 1967. The source article claimed that McCain became impatient when he was preparing for takeoff, and in his haste, raised the cockpit canopy to scold a sailor for the delay, and upon doing so, hit the button that released his ordnance onto the deck, which somehow caused a tremendous fire and the explosion of other bombs and missiles nearby.

I happened to see a man in our local Wal Mart today who was wearing a USS Forrestal cap. I asked him if he served on the Forrestal with John McCain when the deadly accident occurred. He affirmed that he was there during that tragedy.

I asked him to describe the incident, which he was happy to do. I also asked if the incident was, as widely reported, McCain’s fault. He said the incident was not McCain’s fault, that a static charge had ignited a Sidewinder missile on a nearby aircraft, not McCain’s, which caused other explosions. Shrapnel punctured the fuel tanks of nearby aircraft, causing the deck to be soaked in jet fuel and igniting into a massive fire, which in turn, exploded more ordnance, taking more lives and creating more fires and explosions.

John McCain may be a treasonous scumbag, but he bears no responsibility for the Forrestal tragedy. I received this report from a firsthand witness.