The Arrogance Of Randi Rhodes: McCain Was Well-Treated In Vietnam?

Just when I thought broadcast journalism couldn't sink any lower than the attacks on Sarah Palin's family or that the libs couldn't possibly say anything more stupid than what they've already said, uber-leftist Randi Rhodes had to go and prove me wrong.

While it is typical of the Democrat Party and of the left in general to re-write history, Randi Rhodes does it with an arrogance not seen since ... well ... I don't think arrogance like this has ever been seen before.

Rhodes has made the ultra-idiotic claim that John McCain was "well-treated" while a POW in Vietnam. I don't know what her definition of "well-treated" is, but a rationally thinking person would not characterize the torture and brutality of the North Vietnamese Communists as anything good.

Here is what she claims:

RHODES: Of course he (McCain) became very friendly with the Vietnamese. They called him the Prince. He was well treated actually. And he was well treated because he traded these propaganda interviews for good treatment. So look, it's a horrible story anyway you cut it, anyway you look at it, any way you you you deal with it. But, it's not the story Fred Thompson told. Nor is it the story Rudy Giuliani told. Nor is it the story Sarah Palin told. Nor is it the story anybody. Cindy McCain knew to limit herself to 'I think what my husband did in Vietnam was heroic' because she knows the truth too.

Yes, Cindy McCain and Fred Thompson do know the turth, which is why we know Randi Rhodes is deliberately telling lies. Yes, I am calling Randi Rhodes a liar. Got a problem with that? Well, then pull up your big-girl panties and deal with it.

Here are some accurate accounts of what happened to John McCain in Hanoi. From U.S. News & World Report in 1973:

Some North Vietnamese swam out and pulled me to the side of the lake and immediately started stripping me, which is their standard procedure. Of course, this being in the center of town, a huge crowd of people gathered, and they were all hollering and screaming and cursing and spitting and kicking at me. When they had most of my clothes off, I felt a twinge in my right knee. I sat up and looked at it, and my right foot was resting next to my left knee, just in a 90-degree position. I said, "My God--my leg!" That seemed to enrage them —I don't know why. One of them slammed a rifle butt down on my shoulder, and smashed it pretty badly. Another stuck a bayonet in my foot. The mob was really getting up-tight. ... I think it was on the fourth day that two guards came in, instead of one. One of them pulled back the blanket to show the other guard my injury. I looked at my knee. It was about the size, shape and color of a football. I remembered that when I was a flying instructor a fellow had ejected from his plane and broken his thigh. He had gone into shock, the blood had pooled in his leg, and he died, which came as quite a surprise to us—a man dying of a broken leg. Then I realized that a very similar thing was happening to me. When I saw it, I said to the guard, "O.K., get the officer." An officer came in after a few minutes. It was the man that we came to know very well as "The Bug." He was a psychotic torturer, one of the worst fiends that we had to deal with. I said, "O.K., I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital." He left and came back with a doctor, a guy that we called "Zorba," who was completely incompetent. He squatted down, took my pulse. He did not speak English, but shook his head and jabbered to "The Bug." I asked, "Are you going to take me to the hospital?" "The Bug" replied, "It's too late." I said, "If you take me to the hospital, I'll get well."

The above accounts are certainly more accurate since John McCain was there to see them and Randi Rhodes was not.

I believe that Randi Rhodes spoke those lies knowing that someone out there was going to be naive and gullible enough to believe them. (It certainly seems that CNN was gullible enough) But, then, I guess the average leftist will believe anything their fellow leftists tell them, even when they are bold-faced lies.

You can access the orignal article on-line here:

Rhodes Claims McCain Was 'Well-Treated' In Vietnam
Brian Maloney
Radio Equalizer
September 8, 2008

And the 1973 U.S. News & World Report article here:

John McCain, Prisoner Of War: A First-Person Account
John S. McCain III, Lt. Cmdr. US Navy
U.S. News & World Report
1973

McCain's Former Hanoi Cell Mate Describes Character In Deplorable Conditions

Colonel George "Bud" Day, USAF (Ret.) is currently the most decorated American Veteran alive with more than 70 medals and citations. But he will probably be most remembered for one thing: He was John McCain's cellmate at the North Vietnamese POW compound known as the Hanoi Hilton.

From Fox News:

"They told me we were gonna get a roommate and it was gonna be the prince. The Vietnamese called him the prince so I asked my nurse what was his name? They said John McCain," Day told FOX News. Both he and McCain were taken captive in 1967, and held until their release in 1973.

Anyone who knows even a little bit about the conditions the POWs endured at the hands of the Communists knows how inhumane the North Vietnamese were. Colonel Day describes the conditions that he and (then) Lt. Commander McCain were forced to live in:

The U.S. soldiers were held sometimes five to a cell, barely big enough for two. "He had this gimpy knee where he'd busted his knee, this arm had been fractured in a couple places, he'd been bayoneted in the leg, this arm was out at the shoulder and, in fact, during that time it was out at the shoulder so long it wore a hole in this bone," Day said. During captivity, they were tortured mercilessly, Day said, describing one tactic that McCain has also recalled. "They roped me under the arms, tied my hands behind my back, ran another rope to that, got me up on a chair, threw that rope up over a rafter and jerked the chair out from under me and your own weight just tears your body apart," he said. Day’s broken arm was re-broken during torture so he would never fly again.

But John McCain became an ad hoc doctor and physical therapist:

"John said, 'Well we'll gather up some bamboo,' and he was in a bandage on his leg at that time. So I got some strips of bamboo, smuggled them into the room, John put his foot in my arm pit and pulled on my wrist 'till we could get the bone forced back down … it wasn't exactly perfect but it worked out he got it back to where it was functional," Day said. But nerve damage was extensive — his crushed hands were useless. Meanwhile, McCain was treated no better than the trash they were fed in the form of a soup. "I mean you could smell him for 25 feet. Bunch of food and nasty stuff in his hair, and down his neck and inside his cast. The cast was not lined so every time he would move inside this cast, it was just eating a hole in his arm or his elbow or someplace, and he was just in — he was in pain," Day recalled. Yet McCain, now 71, made efforts to help Day recover from his own injuries, Day said.

This speaks volumes about the character of John McCain. I seriously doubt that Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would have attempted anything even close to what McCain was doing for his fellow POWs. In fact, I think it would have been more likely that if put in the same situation, Hillary and Obama would have been cutting selfish deals for special treatment, something that McCain absolutely refused to do:

Day said by any humane standard, McCain would have been a good candidate for early release from the camp, but that wasn’t in his playbook. "It also wasn’t in his playbook to die. In fact he quickly became a leader." Day said he asked McCain if he would be one of his preachers. "He said sure. He had a great handle on the Episcopalian liturgy, he could just repeat it verbatim," he said. But repeating what he went through during his incarceration is something McCain almost never does as a presidential candidate. Day said he thinks he should. "I've never seen any shortcomings or any shortfall out of him talking about that, but he just doesn’t trade on that. I think he feels that it’s wrong to trade on being a hero, but he is," Day said.

Whereas Vietnam Veterans quickly let the world know of their disdain for the back-stabbing John Kerry, these same Vietnam Veterans know who kept the faith.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

McCain's Former Hanoi Cell Mate Describes Character In Deplorable Conditions
Carl Cameron
FoxNews.com
May 8, 2008

Getting To Know John McCain

This is a column everyone should read. How well do you think you know John McCain? How well would you like to know John McCain?

Read what Karl Rove has to say in the Wall Street Journal:

It came to me while I was having dinner with Doris Day. No, not that Doris Day. The Doris Day who is married to Col. Bud Day, Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, fighter pilot, Vietnam POW and roommate of John McCain at the Hanoi Hilton. As we ate near the Days' home in Florida recently, I heard things about Sen. McCain that were deeply moving and politically troubling. Moving because they told me things about him the American people need to know. And troubling because it is clear that Mr. McCain is one of the most private individuals to run for president in history. When it comes to choosing a president, the American people want to know more about a candidate than policy positions. They want to know about character, the values ingrained in his heart. For Mr. McCain, that means they will want to know more about him personally than he has been willing to reveal. Mr. Day relayed to me one of the stories Americans should hear. It involves what happened to him after escaping from a North Vietnamese prison during the war. When he was recaptured, a Vietnamese captor broke his arm and said, "I told you I would make you a cripple." The break was designed to shatter Mr. Day's will. He had survived in prison on the hope that one day he would return to the United States and be able to fly again. To kill that hope, the Vietnamese left part of a bone sticking out of his arm, and put him in a misshapen cast. This was done so that the arm would heal at "a goofy angle," as Mr. Day explained. Had it done so, he never would have flown again. But it didn't heal that way because of John McCain. Risking severe punishment, Messrs. McCain and Day collected pieces of bamboo in the prison courtyard to use as a splint. Mr. McCain put Mr. Day on the floor of their cell and, using his foot, jerked the broken bone into place. Then, using strips from the bandage on his own wounded leg and the bamboo, he put Mr. Day's splint in place. Years later, Air Force surgeons examined Mr. Day and complemented the treatment he'd gotten from his captors. Mr. Day corrected them. It was Dr. McCain who deserved the credit. Mr. Day went on to fly again. Another story I heard over dinner with the Days involved Mr. McCain serving as one of the three chaplains for his fellow prisoners. At one point, after being shuttled among different prisons, Mr. Day had found himself as the most senior officer at the Hanoi Hilton. So he tapped Mr. McCain to help administer religious services to the other prisoners. Today, Mr. Day, a very active 83, still vividly recalls Mr. McCain's sermons. "He remembered the Episcopal liturgy," Mr. Day says, "and sounded like a bona fide preacher." One of Mr. McCain's first sermons took as its text Luke 20:25 and Matthew 22:21, "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's." Mr. McCain said he and his fellow prisoners shouldn't ask God to free them, but to help them become the best people they could be while serving as POWs. It was Caesar who put them in prison and Caesar who would get them out. Their task was to act with honor. ... Mr. Day recalls with pride Mr. McCain stubbornly refusing to accept special treatment or curry favor to be released early, even when gravely ill. Mr. McCain knew the Vietnamese wanted the propaganda victory of the son and grandson of Navy admirals accepting special treatment. "He wasn't corruptible then," Mr. Day says, "and he's not corruptible today." The stories told to me by the Days involve more than wartime valor. For example, in 1991 Cindy McCain was visiting Mother Teresa's orphanage in Bangladesh when a dying infant was thrust into her hands. The orphanage could not provide the medical care needed to save her life, so Mrs. McCain brought the child home to America with her. She was met at the airport by her husband, who asked what all this was about. Mrs. McCain replied that the child desperately needed surgery and years of rehabilitation. "I hope she can stay with us," she told her husband. Mr. McCain agreed. Today that child is their teenage daughter Bridget.

I'd be proud to have John McCain as my next-door-neighbor. I'd be equally proud to have him as President of the United States of America.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Getting To Know John McCain
Karl Rove
The Wall Street Journal
April 30, 2008