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John McCain being captured by Vietnamese in Truc Bach Lake, Hanoi in 1967 (i.imgur.com)

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[–]blacksunalchemy -18 ポイント-17 ポイント

Song Bird

[–]YouArentReasonable 14 ポイント15 ポイント

Interrogation and beatings resumed in the hospital; McCain gave the North Vietnamese his ship's name, squadron's name, and the attack's intended target.[118] This information, along with personal details of McCain's life and purported statements by McCain about the war's progress, would appear over the next two weeks in the North Vietnamese official newspaper Nhân Dân[103] as well as in dispatches from outlets such as the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina.[119] Disclosing the military information was in violation of the Code of Conduct, which McCain later wrote he regretted, although he saw the information as being of no practical use to the North Vietnamese.[120] Further coerced to give future targets, he named cities that had already been bombed, and responding to demands for the names of his squadron's members, he supplied instead the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line.[118][121]

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In late August 1968, a program of vigorous torture methods began on McCain.[141] The North Vietnamese used rope bindings to put him into prolonged, painful positions and severely beat him every two hours, all while he was suffering from dysentery.[141] His right leg was reinjured, his ribs were cracked, some teeth were broken at the gumline, and his left arm was re-fractured.[33][141] Lying in his own waste, his spirit was broken;[141] the beginnings of a suicide attempt were stopped by guards.[101] After four days of this, McCain signed and taped[142] an anti-American propaganda "confession" that said, in part, "I am a black criminal and I have performed the deeds of an air pirate. I almost died, and the Vietnamese people saved my life, thanks to the doctors."[101][141] He used stilted Communist jargon and ungrammatical language to signal that the statement was forced.[121]McCain was haunted then and since with the belief that he had dishonored his country, his family, his comrades and himself by his statement,[143][144] but as he later wrote, "I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine."[109] Two weeks later his captors tried to force him to sign a second statement; his will to resist restored, he refused.[141] He sometimes received two to three beatings per week because of his continued resistance;[145] the sustained mistreatment went on for over a year.[133] His refusals to cooperate, laced with loud obscenities directed towards his guards, were often heard by other POWs.[132] His boxing experience from his Naval Academy days helped him withstand the battering,[43] and the North Vietnamese did not break him again.[141]

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Other American POWs were similarly tortured and maltreated in order to extract "confessions" and propaganda statements.[146][147] Many, especially among those who had been captured earlier and imprisoned longer – such as those in the "Alcatraz Gang" – endured even worse treatment than McCain.[148] Under extreme duress, virtually all the POWs eventually yielded something to their captors

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_and_military_career_of_John_McCain#Prisoner_of_war

[–]YouArentReasonable 5 ポイント6 ポイント

November 26, 1999

John McCain in the Crucible

By JAMES B. STOCKDALE

CORONADO, Calif. -- I am not surprised by reports that Senator John McCain's political enemies have been spreading rumors that his famous temper is a sign of a broader "instability" caused by his imprisonment in Vietnam.

In fact, a few weeks ago I received a call from an old friend who is also close to the George W. Bush campaign soliciting comments on Mr. McCain's "weaknesses." As I told that caller, I think John McCain is solid as a rock.

And I consider it blasphemy to smudge the straight-arrow prisoner-of-war record of a man who was near death when he arrived at Hoa Loa prison 1967: both arms broken, left leg broken, left shoulder broken by a civilian with a rifle butt.

He was eventually taken to the same rat-infested hospital room I had occupied two years earlier, and, like me, he had surgery on his leg. By then the Vietnamese had discovered that his father was the ranking admiral in the Pacific Fleet, and he received an offer that, as far as I know, was made to no other American prisoner: immediate release, no strings attached. He refused, thereby sentencing himself to four more years in a cell.

There was a special cramped and hot privy-like structure in that Hanoi prison reserved for whichever American was causing the Vietnamese the most trouble. I was the first in the camp to be locked up in it, and I gave it the name Calcutta.

There was only room for one person at a time in the cage, and after a couple of months I was taken out and marched back to a regular cell. As I limped along, I sneaked a peek at my replacement: John McCain, hobbling along on his own bad leg.

As one of the few Americans who spent more than four years in solitary confinement during that war, I know that pride and self-respect lead to aggressiveness, and aggressiveness leads to a deep sense of joy when one is under pressure. This is hardly a character flaw.

The military psychiatrists who periodically examine former prisoners of war have found that the more resistant a man was to harsh treatment, the more emotionally stable he is likely to become later in life.

The troublemakers who endured long stretches in solitary, the men we called the tigers, are for the most part more in tune with themselves now than are those who chose the easier path of nonconfrontation, which made them "deserving" of cell mates. The psychiatrists tell us that many of those prisoners who chose a more docile existence missed out on the joy of "getting even" after release; some look back on their performances with regret.

The psychiatrists have it partly right, but the truth of imprisonment is best learned from the writings of men who have spent a lot of time in cells, like Dostoyevsky, Cervantes and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The last described his feeling of high-mindedness in his gulag writings:

"And it was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. . . .

And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me: 'Bless you, prison!' "

I understand that, and so does John McCain.

James B. Stockdale, a retired Navy Vice Admiral, was the Reform Party vice-presidential candidate in 1992.