McCain personafies Self-Sacrifice

[indy_85stariones]

Reason #01 to vote for John McCain...

 

He is a person who understands and has demonstrated self-sacrifice.

 

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/2008/0...on-account.html

They just told me I'd never go home and I was going to be tried as a war criminal. That was their constant theme for many months.

 

Suddenly "The Cat" said to me, "Do you want to go home?"

 

I was astonished, and I tell you frankly that I said that I would have to think about it. I went back to my room, and I thought about it for a long time. At this time I did not have communication with the camp senior ranking officer, so I could get no advice. I was worried whether I could stay alive or not, because I was in rather bad condition. I had been hit with a severe case of dysentery, which kept on for about a year and a half. I was losing weight again.

 

But I knew that the Code of Conduct says, "You will not accept parole or amnesty," and that "you will not accept special favors." For somebody to go home earlier is a special favor. There's no other way you can cut it.

 

I went back to him three nights later. He asked again, "Do you want to go home?" I told him "No." He wanted to know why, and I told him the reason. I said that Alvarez [first American captured] should go first, then enlisted men and that kind of stuff.

 

"The Cat" told me that President Lyndon Johnson had ordered me home. He handed me a letter from my wife, in which she had said, "I wished that you had been one of those three who got to come home." Of course, she had no way to understand the ramifications of this. "The Cat" said that the doctors had told him that I could not live unless I got medical treatment in the United States.

 

We went through this routine and still I told him "No." Three nights later we went through it all over again. On the morning of the Fourth of July, 1968, which happened to be the same day that my father took over as commander in chief of U. S. Forces in the Pacific, I was led into another quiz room.

 

"The Rabbit" and "The Cat" were sitting there. I walked in and sat down, and "The Rabbit" said, "Our senior wants to know your final answer."

 

"My final answer is the same. It's 'No.' "

 

"That is your final answer?"

 

"That is my final answer."

 

With this "The Cat," who was sitting there with a pile of papers in front of him and a pen in his hand, broke the pen in two. Ink spurted all over. He stood up, kicked the chair over behind him, and said, "They taught you too well. They taught you too well"—in perfect English, I might add. He turned, went out and slammed the door, leaving "The Rabbit" and me sitting there. "The Rabbit" said "Now, McCain, it will be very bad for you. Go back to your room.

 

What they wanted, of course, was to send me home at the same time that my father took over as commander in the Pacific. This would have made them look very humane in releasing the injured son of a top U. S. officer. It would also have given them a great lever against my fellow prisoners, because the North Vietnamese were always putting this "class" business on us. They could have said to the others "Look, you poor devils, the son of the man who is running the war has gone home and left you here. No one cares about you ordinary fellows." I was determined at all times to prevent any exploitation of my father and my family.

 

There was another consideration for me. Even though I was told I would not have to sign any statements or confessions before I went home, I didn't believe them. They would have got me right up to that airplane and said, "Now just sign this little statement." At that point, I doubt that I could have resisted, even though I felt very strong at the time.

 

But the primary thing I considered was that I had no right to go ahead of men like Alvarez, who had been there three years before I "got killed"—that's what we say instead of "before I got shot down," because in a way becoming a prisoner in North Vietnam was like being killed.

 

About a month and a half later, when the three men who were selected for release had reached America, I was set up for some very severe treatment which lasted for the next year and a half.

 

Many of his supporters understand that John McCain's motivation for running for president is NOT out of a sense of selfish ambition, but IS the result of his driven desire to live out the miliary Code of Conduct - Duty, Honor, and Country.

 

It is not surprising that the majority of his supporters have ties to those that serve in the military...

http://www.militarytimes.com/static/projec...1003_ep_2pp.pdf

 

Summary of a recent poll taken by the Military Times...

All Respondants: --- McCain 68% Obama 23%

Enlisted Personel: -- McCain 67% Obama 24%

Officers: ------------- McCain 70% Obama 22%

 

It is no surprise that the most important criteria that the folks who serve in the military use in deciding for whom to vote for president is:

The Character of the Candidate -- 42%

Edited October 27, 2008 by indy_85stariones

[Shelby]

and this took 49 yrs to be writen :biggrinumbrella1:

[patra_is_here]

yeah even as a now obama supporter i think mccain is pretty selfless. too bad that being selfless doesn't mean you make good executive decisions.

[Shelby]

my problem is he's been there for how long now and done realy nothing he said he will do , why is that , truth is he's more of a follower then a leader , it takes a man thats not afraid to rock the boat to bring about changes , not saying Obama will do any better but if past history is any measureing stick i'd say Mcain would not live up to the hype he's been spreading

[patra_is_here]

yeah i dont really buy into the 'maverick' image myself. what i do buy into is the "educated calm eloquent logical intelligent" image given off by the youthful attractive black man.

[TopDawg_43]

I'll be happy when this election is over. I'm getting sick and tired of all these politics. Everywhere I turn I find stuff like this. Even when I go to my usual outlet (net car club), I find more Obama this, McCain that..........

[patra_is_here]

god forbid we talk about the most relevant issues in our lifes with each other.

 

i'm pretty sure the virtual mechanic forum is full of car talk.

[Eirewolf]

McCain is a big-governement loving liberal. probably a nice guy....but not my guy.

 

Obama is a socialist, though and through.......i shudder to think how many old cool cars will be sentenced to death under his Enviro policies. also definitely not my guy.

 

either way, we're pretty much in bad shape. i doubt either will have what it takes to pull the country out of the slide to euro-socialism that we are in. i'm betting neither wants to.

 

i think obama will win it, which is why i'm hiding my guns and starquests.

[PDX87Starion]

John McCain's motivation for running for president is NOT out of a sense of selfish ambition, but IS the result of his driven desire to live out the miliary Code of Conduct - Duty, Honor, and Country.

 

Not that it matters...but what does John McCain have to say about Jonh McCains motivation for running for president?

 

From McCains 2002 memoire "Worth the Fighting For" after he ran for pres. in 2000.

 

"I didn't decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president. . . . In truth, I'd had the ambition for a long time."

 

Ironic?

 

BTW

Not that it matters...but that poll was taken from 4300 subscribers of 'Military Times' magazine, so the actual vote results from the entire military personnel may result in much closer numbers.

Edited October 27, 2008 by PDX87Starion

[patra_is_here]

it weird that so many people are anti socialism, when countries like canada, france, and the swedes all have heavy socialist policies (much heavy than the USA ever will allow), and they have a high quality of living then we do.

 

honestly, when people are completely anti socialists, i feel like their either just completely selfish or have no compassion for the rest of the humans in the USA. sure some people will abuse whatever system there is. people abuse socialist systems (medicare, welfare, public school, hospitcal, public roads) and people abuse free market capitalism. (fraud, subprime loans, theft, scams).

 

ultimately i care MORE about the idea that the rest of the people in this country have a chance at a higher standard of living VS me having a polluting car or a submachine gun or an extra $200 a year in taxes.

[chiplee]

I'm an active Marine officer who was enlisted for 4 years and I used "character of the candidate" to decide to vote for Obama.

[vbrad511]

Don't be fooled by the myth of John McCain Thursday, 24 January 2008 A lazy, hazy myth has arisen out of the mists of New Hampshire and South Carolina. Across the pan-Atlantic press, the grizzled 71-year-old Vietnam vet, John McCain, is being billed as the Republican liberals can live with. He is "a bipartisan progressive"", "a principled hard liberal", "a decent man" – in the words of liberal newspapers. His fragile new frontrunner status as we go into Super Tuesday is being seen as something to cautiously welcome, a kick to the rotten Republican establishment. But the truth is that McCain is the candidate we should most fear. McCain is third-generation navy royalty, raised from a young age to be a senior figure in the Armed Forces, like his father and grandfather before him. He was sent to one of the most elite boarding schools in America, then to a naval academy where he ranked 894th out of 899 students in ability. He used nepotism to get ahead: when he was rejected by the National War College, he used his father's contacts with the Secretary of the Navy to make them reconsider. He then swiftly married the heiress to a multi-million dollar fortune. Right up to his twenties, he remained a strikingly violent man, "ready to fight at the drop of a hat", according to his biographer Robert Timberg. This rage seems to be at the core of his personality: describing his own childhood, McCain has written: "At the smallest provocation I would go off into a mad frenzy, and then suddenly crash to the floor unconscious. When I got angry I held my breath until I blacked out." But he claims he was transformed by his experiences in Vietnam – a war he still defends as "noble" and "winnable", if only it had been fought harder. To this day, he cannot lift his arms high enough to comb his own hair. On his release, he used his wife's fortune to run to as a Republican senator. He was a standard-issue Reaganite corporate Republican – until the Keating Five corruption scandal consumed him. In 1987, it was revealed that McCain, along with four other senators, had taken huge campaign donations from a fraudster called Charles Keating. In return they pressured government regulators not to look too hard into Keating's affairs. McCain later admitted: "I did it for no other reason than I valued [Keating's] support." McCain took the only course that could possibly preserve his reputation: He said it showed how "we need to drive the special interests out of Washington", and became a high-profile campaigner for campaign finance reform. But privately, his behaviour hasn't changed much. For example, in 2000 he lobbied federal regulators hard on behalf of a major campaign contributor, Paxson Communications, in an act the regulators spluttered was "highly unusual". He has never won an election without outspending his opponent. But McCain has distinguished himself most as an über-hawk on foreign policy. To give a brief smorgasbord of his views: at a recent rally, he sang "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann". He says North Korea should be threatened with "extinction". McCain has mostly opposed using US power for humanitarian goals, jeering at proposals to intervene in Rwanda or Bosnia – but he is very keen to use it for great power imperialism. He brags he would be happy for US troops to remain in Iraq for 100 years, and declares: "I'm not at all embarrassed of my friendship with Henry Kissinger; I'm proud of it." His most thorough biographer – and recent supporter – Matt Welch concludes: "McCain's programme for fighting foreign wars would be the most openly militaristic and interventionist platform in the White House since Teddy Roosevelt... [it] is considerably more hawkish than anything George Bush has ever practised." So why do so many nice liberals have a weak spot for McCain? Well, to his credit, he doesn't hate immigrants: he proposed a programme to legalise the 12 million undocumented workers in the US. He sincerely opposes torture, as a survivor of it himself. He has apologised for denying global warming and now advocates a cap on greenhouse gas emissions – but only if China and India can also be locked into the system. He is somewhat uncomfortable with the religious right (while supporting a ban on abortion and gay marriage). It is a sign of how far to the right the Republican Party has drifted that these are considered signs of liberalism, rather than basic humanity. If we don't start warning that the Real McCain is not the Real McCoy, we might sleepwalk into four more years of Republicanism. MORE: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/comme...ain-773072.html

[patra_is_here]

you expect me to believe a UK newspaper?!?!?!?

[vbrad511]

Must've been quite a sacrifice to come home from a POW camp to a woman that waited for you for 5 1/2 years, find her no longer appealing, and jump on the first younger, attractive, rich woman he could find.

[indy_85stariones]

BTW

Not that it matters...but that poll was taken from 4300 subscribers of 'Military Times' magazine, so the actual vote results from the entire military personnel may result in much closer numbers.

 

Not that it matters... but the absentee votes of military personel who were residents of Florida, became a very HUGE issue in 2000

 

More info...

Dougherty, John E. (2001). Election 2000: How the Military Vote Was Suppressed. ISBN 978-1589390652.

[Dcrasta]

I'll be happy when this election is over. I'm getting sick and tired of all these politics. Everywhere I turn I find stuff like this. Even when I go to my usual outlet (net car club), I find more Obama this, McCain that..........

 

 

Welp, Virtual Mechanic is that way..

[vbrad511]

You can add to this that donations from the military to Obama outnumber them to McCain 6 to 1.

Donations from the military to Ron Paul outnumber them to McCain 3 to 1.

[patra_is_here]

You can add to this that donations from the military to Obama outnumber them to McCain 6 to 1.

Donations from the military to Ron Paul outnumber them to McCain 3 to 1.

 

im not sure what you're getting at with these stats. are you showing that the military people vote based off of which candidate will keep them employed?

[PDX87Starion]

im not sure what you're getting at with these stats. are you showing that the military people vote based off of which candidate will keep them employed?

 

No this is what he meant.

 

http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/view...ns/5376450.html

"According to an analysis of campaign contributions by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions as has Republican John McCain."

 

So who do you suppose those donors are going to vote for? I guess they dont subscribe to "military times" magazine.

 

 

Edit for more info:

"The fiercely anti-war Ron Paul -- though he suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination months ago -- has received more than four times McCain's haul.

 

Despite McCain's status as a decorated veteran and the historically Republican leanings among the military, members of the armed services overall -- whether stationed overseas or at home -- are favoring Obama with their campaign contributions in 2008 by a $55,000 margin.

 

Although 59 percent of federal contributions by military personnel for all offices has gone to Republicans this cycle, of money to the presumed presidential nominees, 57 percent has gone to Obama.

 

McCain's campaign recently overtook Paul's among all military donors, though Paul still leads with contributors listing an overseas address.

 

Individuals in the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps have all generally leaned Republican this cycle, but the only branch in which that ideology has carried over to the presidential race is the Marine Corps, where McCain leads Obama by about $4,000.

 

In each of the other branches -- including the Navy, in which McCain served when he was taken prisoner during the Vietnam War -- Obama leads by significant margins."

Edited October 28, 2008 by PDX87Starion

[Kellydahman]

Out with the OLD and in with the New :hmm3grin2orange:

[patra_is_here]

oh thanks. i missread the stats and was confused.

[Dcrasta]

No this is what he meant.

 

http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/view...ns/5376450.html

"According to an analysis of campaign contributions by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions as has Republican John McCain."

 

So who do you suppose those donors are going to vote for? I guess they dont subscribe to "military times" magazine.

 

 

Edit for more info:

"The fiercely anti-war Ron Paul -- though he suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination months ago -- has received more than four times McCain's haul.

 

Despite McCain's status as a decorated veteran and the historically Republican leanings among the military, members of the armed services overall -- whether stationed overseas or at home -- are favoring Obama with their campaign contributions in 2008 by a $55,000 margin.

 

Although 59 percent of federal contributions by military personnel for all offices has gone to Republicans this cycle, of money to the presumed presidential nominees, 57 percent has gone to Obama.

 

McCain's campaign recently overtook Paul's among all military donors, though Paul still leads with contributors listing an overseas address.

 

Individuals in the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps have all generally leaned Republican this cycle, but the only branch in which that ideology has carried over to the presidential race is the Marine Corps, where McCain leads Obama by about $4,000.

 

In each of the other branches -- including the Navy, in which McCain served when he was taken prisoner during the Vietnam War -- Obama leads by significant margins."

 

Maybe this is because of Senator Mccain's voting record when it comes to the military and IRAQ in general.

 

"- John McCain skipped close to a dozen votes on Iraq, and on at least another 10 occasions, he voted against arming and equipping the troops, providing adequate rest for the troops between deployments and for health care or other benefits for veterans." [source - veteransforcommensense.org