John McCain is not a war hero!

“Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump criticizes US senator John McCain for getting captured during the Vietnam war. Speaking at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa on Saturday, Trump says he supported McCain in the 2008 presidential elections, but questions his status as a war hero. Trump is currently running at the top of most Republican polls.”

President Trump still continues to be criticized for that statement and few in the general public ever took the time to investigate and find out if what President Trump said is true.  John McCain is no hero in fact he may have been a traitor.  The only mistake President Trump made was to say “for getting captured during the Vietnam war.”

John McCain flew ground-attack aircraft from carriers in the US Navy. He was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 and spent the next six years as a prisoner of the Vietnamese, whom he alleged tortured him. His mission when he was shot down was the bombing of a light bulb factory, a civilian target prohibited under international law. This means that rather than a “war hero” John McCain is in fact a “war criminal.”  Many will say he was only following orders and that is true he did not select the target.  But, the liberals did not give the Army and Marine Infantry soldiers the same break.  They called them MURDERS!

McCain didn’t just carry out such illegal orders himself, he willingly voiced support for them, specifically during the 1999 war against Yugoslavia when “water systems, power and heating plants, hospitals, universities, schools, apartment complexes, senior citizens’ homes, bridges, factories, trains, buses, radio and TV stations, the telephone system, oil refineries, embassies, marketplaces and more were deliberately destroyed by U.S./NATO planes in a ruthless 10-week bombing campaign.”

McCain is often called a “war hero”, a title adorning an unlovely resume starting with a father who was an admiral who graduated fifth from the bottom at the US Naval Academy, where he earned the nickname “McNasty”.  McCain flew 23 bombing missions over North Vietnam, (Air Force Pilots were required to fly 100 missions before rotating back to the States). each averaging about half an hour, total time ten hours and thirty minutes. For these brief excursions the admiral’s son was awarded two Silver Stars, two Legions of Merit, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, three Bronze Stars, the Vietnamese Legion of Honor and three Purple Hearts. US Veteran Dispatch calculates our hero earned a medal an hour.  McCain was shot down and parachuted into Truc Boch Lake, whence he was captured by Vietnamese, and put in prison.

On that gray morning more, McCain was knocked unconscious briefly when he ejected from his damaged bomber. Both his arms were broken, his right knee was shattered, and when he splashed into the middle of Truc Bach (White Silk) Lake, his 50 pounds of flight gear kept him from reaching the surface.  His arms and right knee was shattered because he did not follow proper procedures when ejecting from the plane.  In other words he SCREWED up.

Why did Senator McCain oppose releasing documents and information about American prisoners of war in Vietnam and the missing in action who have still not been accounted for.  His staunch resistance to laying open the POW/MIA records has baffled colleagues and others who have followed his career.  His anti-disclosure campaign successfully shut down the release of these documents. Literally thousands of documents that would otherwise have been declassified long ago have now been legislated into secrecy.  What was and is Senator McCain afraid may come out if these documents are released?  Is he afraid that if some of these returned prisoners debriefings were released they may reveal Senator John McCain was a traitor? Many former POWs, MIA families and veterans have suggested there is something especially damning about McCain that the senator wants to keep hidden. 

In 1989, 11 members of the House of Representatives introduced a measure they called “The Truth Bill.” A brief and simple document, it said: “[The] head of each department or agency which holds or receives any records and information, including live-sighting reports, which have been correlated or possibly correlated to United States personnel listed as prisoner of war or missing in action from World War II, the Korean conflict and the Vietnam conflict shall make available to the public all such records and information held or received by that department or agency. In addition, the Department of Defense shall make available to the public with its records and information a complete listing of United States personnel classified as prisoner of war, missing in action, or killed in action (body not returned) from World War II, the Korean conflict, and the Vietnam conflict.” 

This Truth Bill was bitterly opposed by the Pentagon, “The Truth Bill” got nowhere. It was reintroduced in the next Congress in 1991 — and again disappeared. Then, suddenly, out of the Senate, birthed by the Arizona Senator, a new piece of legislation emerged. It was called “The McCain Bill.” This measure turned “The Truth Bill ” on its head. It created a bureaucratic maze from which only a fraction of the available documents could emerge. And it became law. So restrictive were its provisions that one clause actually said the Pentagon didn’t even have to inform the public when it received intelligence that Americans were alive in captivity.

Boiled down, the The McCain Bill means that the Defense Department is not obligated to tell the public about prisoners believed alive in captivity and what efforts are being made to rescue them. It only has to notify the White House and the intelligence committees in the Senate and House. The committees are forbidden under law from releasing such information.

Then there is the Missing Service Personnel Act, which McCain succeeded in gutting in 1996. A year before, the act had been strengthened, with bipartisan support, to compel the Pentagon to deploy more resources with greater speed to locate and rescue missing men. The measure imposed strict reporting requirements.  Again what is Senator McCain afraid may come out?  Other than Senator McCain I do not know one veteran of the Vietnam “Conflict” that supports not doing all we can to discover the truth about these MIA.  I was in Vietnam when Senator McCain was shot down.

 One final evisceration in the law was McCain’s removal of all its enforcement teeth. The original act provided for criminal penalties for anyone, such as military bureaucrats in Washington, who destroy or cover up or withhold from families any information about a missing man. McCain erased this part of the law. He said the penalties would have a chilling effect on the Pentagon’s ability to recruit personnel for its POW/MIA office.

McCain has said again and again that he has seen no “credible” evidence that more than a tiny handful of men might have been alive in captivity after the official prison return in 1973.  One is one too many! He dismisses all of the subsequent radio intercepts, live sightings, satellite photos, CIA reports, defector information, recovered enemy documents and reports of ransom demands — thousands and thousands of pieces of information indicating live captives — as meaningless. He has even described these intelligence reports as the rough equivalent of UFO and alien sightings.  Again I ask why would a former POW work so hard and so persistently to keep POW/MIA information from coming out?

Some McCain watchers searching for answers point to his recently published best-selling autobiography, Faith of My Fathers, half of which is devoted to his years as a prisoner. In the book, he says he felt badly throughout his captivity because he knew he was being treated more leniently than his fellow POWs owing to his propaganda value as the son of Adm. John S. McCain II, who was then the CINCPAC — commander in chief of all U.S. forces in the Pacific region, including Vietnam.  Also in the book, the Arizona Senator repeatedly expresses guilt and disgrace at having broken under torture and given the North Vietnamese a taped confession, a confession he could not deny because tapes were available. The tapes were broadcast over the camp loudspeakers, saying he was a war criminal who had, among other acts, bombed a school. “I felt faithless and couldn’t control my despair,” he writes. What about the 32 tapes played on Vietnam radio where he said he was being treated well and that he killed innocent Vietnamese for the United States and if not for North Vietnam’s fine hospitals and doctors he would have never walked again.  John McCain on 32 radio taped broadcast praised North Vietnam and criticized the United States. A war hero I think not!

New York Times: “His (John McCain’s) most striking achievement came when he joined with another Vietnam veteran, Senator John Kerry (another traitor), to puncture the myth that Vietnam continued holding American prisoners.

The press corps, covering the state-by-state primary vote, made an assumption, based apparently on sentiment, that McCain, as the war hero, would capture the significant veterans’ vote by stunning margins. Actually, he didn’t capture it at all. When the states were tallied up, the veterans’ vote went to George W. Bush.

"When I was offered a chance to go home early from prison camp in Vietnam, I put my country first.  And I’ve been doing that ever since.  I had an opportunity at that time, when I was in prison in North Vietnam, to come home early because of the fact that my father was an admiral," McCain said. "And I chose not to, because I put my country first.”  If he had come home early he would have never been elected to any office in the United States.  He would have disgraced not only himself, but his family.  He certainly would not have been mentioned as a war hero.  He did not come home because he would have lost face.  It had nothing to do with loyalty to his country.  As usual John McCain was only interested in himself and his future.

I have far more to say about John McCain the war hero, but I will save that for a later date.

Do not take my freedom of privacy from me!

I want to begin this piece with saying I am not against ALL  government surveillance. Some spying in my opinion will always be necessary and all countries do it. I am for targeted surveillance, aimed only at those for whom their is substantial evidence to believe they are engaged in real wrongdoing.

It was decided in the 1970’s when the Church Committee revealed abusive surveillance being carried out by the United States government  that the government must have evidence of probable wrong doing before it can listen in on personal conversations. Unfortunately government officials did not follow the law. On their own without consent or knowledge of the people they began the unlawful practice again.

Until recently I was for hanging Edward Snowden. I bought the government's propaganda and the mainstream media’s line that he was a traitor and that he had put government operatives in danger. A close friend had been telling me for years I was wrong and I finally agreed to research the matter and I was shocked at what I discovered. I am sure there are many citizens just like me that are or were making judgments on Edward Snowden without really looking into the facts for themselves.

Is Edward Snowden a villain or not. That is a decision we each must make, but WE should make the decision based on what we learn from taking a critical look at the situation and not just buy into media and government hype.

Here's one definition of a hero: It's someone who, given a choice between doing the right thing at great personal cost or the wrong thing for great personal benefit, chooses the former. I now believe Snowden did the right thing and no one can dispute that he made a great personal sacrifice to do so. Snowden did not gain personally from what he did, he had to leave the country he loved, he had to leave behind his family and girlfriend and he gave up a potential income of around $200,000 a year.  Edward Snowden risk everything to let the American people know how their Constitutional freedoms were being violated by our government. We would most likely never know if not for Edward Snowden.

Unlike others who've controversially exposed government secrets — WikiLeaks' Julian Assange and Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, the latter facing life in prison — Snowden was at least somewhat more selective in his disclosures, and the journalists who received them. It is not true that Snowden’s disclosure put ANY government operative in danger – no identities were released by Snowden. The government has not shown one definitive examples of someone being put in danger. The only government entity harmed was the NSA and the Bush/ Obama administrations. The world became aware of the lies they have told for years regarding national security.

Edward Snowden has forced a public debate on the sweepingly invasive programs that should have taken place before they were created. If continued indefinitely, a secret government database permanently tracking the actions of every American would, indeed, pose a threat to democracy.

Some in media that are more loyal to the government than to the people did the governments bidding and tried to betray Snowden as a person who liked drama. They said He gave himself the code name "Verax," Latin for truth-teller, and he warned a Washington Post reporter that the U.S. intelligence community would be willing to kill to stop the release of the documents. I to would have taken a code name until I was ready to reveal myself – if ever. Most of us take code names when we use the Internet – Tom1942. If anyone believes someone in government is not capable of killing to keep their illegal actions from coming out they are naive. Why would the majority of mainstream media do the governments bidding - for future access to the politicians.

For years the UK and US governments broke the law. For years, they hid the sheer scale of their spying practices not just from the British and American public, but from other elected officials. I bought into the government line, “nothing to hide, nothing to fear.” There is no such thing as a risk free society. I now realize that  myself and most Americans have been dubbed by the government in allowing them to rob us of our guaranteed Constitution rights in the name of TERRORISM! More people are killed each year in automobile accidents than by terrorist and I do not think anyone is willing to give up their freedom to own a car and drive because of the risk of being killed in an automobile accident.

Snowden, now 32, remains in Russia under temporary political asylum after leaking classified National Security Agency documents in 2013. Former Attorney Gen. Eric Holder said Monday that Snowden has performed a "public service" by releasing the information on the agency's vast data-collection programs. This is the same man that wanted him tried, given life in prison or even executed.  This is the same man that lied about Snowden to make the American people and the world turn against him. This is the same man that said a high school drop out would never have access to such classified intelligence. This is the same man that called Snowden a traitor and a liar. Now this same man says Edward Snowden performed a public service, but still wants him tried in the United States for treason. Why would he want him tried for treason if he committed a public service BECAUSE it would be a deterrent to future whistle-blowers. I say pardon Edward Snowden.

I am going to continue this subject in stages, but I want to give you some things to think about as we go forward in days to come. FBI Director James Comey told a Senate committee on Dec. 9 that the two San Bernardino shooters were radicalized at least two years before the terror attack and had discussed on the Internet and telephone jihad and martyrdom as early as 2013. How does Comey know this? Comey was probably relying on communications intercepted by the National Security Agency (NSA). Whether that’s true or he learned it some other way, the government looks bad. If Comey’s source is the NSA, then it means persons known to have radical sympathies still managed to enter the U.S. unhindered and stage an attack. So what are we taxpayers getting for the trillion dollars we have given these agencies for over a decade?

Edward Snowden, the NSA whistle-blower who fled overseas in 2013, said the NSA was intercepting far more data than it could possibly analyze. It did so as part of General Keith Alexander’s “collect it all” campaign. The result was an intelligence agency drowning in so much intercepted data that it missed what Comey’s agents found in a matter of days – once they knew where to look. By then, 14 people were dead and 22 injured. We spent a trillion dollars and sacrificed hard-fought civil liberties so the FBI could explain a killer’s motive after the victims were already dead.

It may be that Comey uncovered information about the terrorists’ background by non-technical means. FBI agents knocked on doors and talked to people.  It’s old-fashioned, but still effective.

The NSA still looks bad in either scenario. It means that even with every possible legal advantage and a near-unlimited budget, the agency still missed very obvious signs of radical intent by people who then entered the U.S. and attacked us. That’s not basic security, much less “national” security. That proves Americans are not getting what we are paying for.

FBI Director Comey says it is all our fault – the citizens fault. He claims the citizens are at fault because we prefer to keep our private affairs private and in doing so we are endangering national security. You would have thought their government tactics had worked in San Bernardino. Government officials know how to blame others, but not accept responsibility for their failures.

Washington politicians and government employees serve Washington not the people of the United States. We are getting a bad deal!

Too  be continued…