I'm not a very eloquent man, but I believe very strongly that the Commander in Chief of the US armed forces should have served. I voted for Dole, and I'll vote for McCain. The following will tell you why.

Vietnam Vet, 1966-68

Standing Up For America's Veterans

John McCain is a leading advocate for active-duty military personnel, reservists, national guardsmen, Veterans and military retirees. He believes that military service is the most honorable endeavor an American may undertake, and that our nation has a solemn commitment to the care and well being of all veterans.

Defending Veterans' Funding from Pork-Barrel Raids

Fought the 1998 effort to transfer $17 billion in critical Veterans funding to pay for highway pork projects.

Sponsored legislation to restore the $17 billion to the VA, which was blocked in the Senate.

Worked to repeal the provision in the 1998 Transportation bill that denied compensation to Veterans for tobacco-related illnesses.

Sponsored an amendment to the 1998 Tobacco bill providing $3 billion for the treatment and care of Veterans suffering from tobacco-related illnesses.

Protecting Earned Benefits for All Who Served

Led the fight in 1999 to add $1.8 billion above the President's request to fund Veterans' programs and services.

Worked to improve Veterans' access to better job opportunities, expand Veterans' hiring preference rights, and improve Veterans' ability to appeal unfavorable hiring decisions through passage of the Veterans Employment Opportunities Act in 1997.

Passed 1997 law providing survivor benefits to the "Forgotten Widows" of retired service members who died before enactment of the Survivor Benefit Plan.

Authored 1992 legislation providing benefits (including retirement pay, separation pay, GI Bill education benefits, and life insurance) to National Guardsmen and Reservists deactivated due to post-Cold War force reductions, as well as similar 1990 legislation targeting active duty personnel subject to involuntary separation from military service.

Fighting for Veterans' Health Benefits

Committed to fulfilling our moral obligation to provide the health care services promised to all Veterans who have served their country.

Sponsored 1998 legislation to provide coverage under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) to military retirees over age 65.

Authored a measure allowing the Medicare system to reimburse the Department of Defense for military retiree health care, reducing costs and providing a more generous benefit.

Fulfilling Our National Commitment

Co-sponsored legislation, approved by the Senate, to test an initiative directing Medicare to reimburse the VA for Medicare- eligible Veterans' health care costs, thus providing them with continuity of care.

Sponsored 1996 legislation requiring the VA to reform its system of funding to more effectively meet the needs of Veterans.

Co-sponsored the 1991 Women Veterans' Health Equity Act to expand VA care for Women Veterans.

Sponsored 1988 legislation to expand access to VA health care for Veterans living in remote rural areas, including Indian reservations.

Providing Gulf War Vets with the Support and Care They Deserve

Authored the 1997 law granting Reservists and National Guardsmen afflicted with Gulf War Syndrome free medical and dental care.

Fought to pass the Persian Gulf War Veterans Act of 1997 to help DOD establish a service connection for Veterans suffering from Gulf War illnesses.

Formed a home state Gulf War Syndrome support group in 1994 to help counsel Gulf War Vets and educate the public about their illnesses.

Co-chaired a special task force in 1991 charged with developing a benefits package for Gulf War Veterans and their families. The task force's proposals were included in a $1 billion benefits package subsequently signed into law.

Always in Guard for America's Military and Veterans

Pushing for enactment of a law for military retirees to reinstate the full 50% active duty salary retirement plan and make automatic the yearly cost of living increase.

Working to improve education benefits for Veterans, allowing more to realize the dream of a college education, or transfer that benefit to their family.

Reaching out to homeless Veterans, who number between 275,000 and 500,000 and constitute a third of all homeless Americans by sponsoring legislation to ensure they receive the benefits to which they are entitled as former service members.

Working to help reverse a discriminatory law that prevents disabled military retirees from receiving Veterans disability pay and military retirement pay at the same time.

Authored legislation in 1999 to help 10,000 military families get off food stamps.

-- Vietnam Veteran for McCain (veitnamvet@classof68.com), February 29, 2000

Answers

Anything less boring to tell today?

-- Zzzz! (_@_._), February 29, 2000.

Obviously you haven't heard Col. David Hackworth talk about McCain. He is for having him tried as a traitor. Go to this site and see if you still feel this way about McCain.

http://www.ojc.org/powforum/capitol/mccain/

Maybe someone could help the link impaired.......sky

-- sky writer (sky@sky'sthelimit.com), February 29, 2000.

Oops...

Got the address wrong, try this http://www.ojc.org/powforum/capital/mccain/

Bye....Sky

-- sky writer (sky@sky'sthelimit.com), February 29, 2000.

Whatever else persons here may say to try to discredit John McCain, this record speaks for itself. It is consistent also, wonder of wonders in politicians today. Thanks, Veteran!

-- Elaine Seavey (Gods1sheep@aol.com), February 29, 2000.

You can vote for him, but don't call him a Republican --- He's a Demo in sheep's clothing...

-- truerightwinger (dontbefooledagain@clinton.com), February 29, 2000.

Thanks, Veteran, for your excellent post. One wonders where these violent and untrue anti-McCain posts actually originate. If anyone wants to know the TRUTH about politics - then read Molly Ivins. Click on Drudge, middle of the page, scroll down, click on Molly Ivins. That reporter has been telling the TRUTH consistently in her home state of Texas. I don't know how many newspapers throughout the country carry her column, but perhaps there are enough to help the TRUTH struggle along best it can.

-- Very (Grateful@still.here), February 29, 2000.

You must be joking. It's a matter of public record that his fellow POW's, indeed, his own Hanoi Hilton roommate, will not endorse him. If you understand the nature of the bonds forged between these men, you would understand that something is terribly wrong with this picture.

As to the betrayal of his wife, that is public record also.

Forget the charisma people. Forget the promises. Remember what Clinton promised?

-- Mumsie (shezdremn@aol.com), February 29, 2000.

Skywriter-

Your link doesn't work. I tried peeling it back to the home page, and that didn't work, either. While I don't have an opinion on Colonel Hackworth, I must say that he is much more controversial among veterans than McCain.

-- Vietnam Veteran for McCain (vietnamvet@classof68.com), February 29, 2000.

Not me.

1968-69

Semper Fi

-- JB (noway@jose.com), February 29, 2000.

mumsie, you are correct about those of us who spent some time as pows... mccain got preferred treatment for all his partipation with the enemey...infact, the same enemy who killed thousands of american men and women serving their country with honor, raised a bust of mr. traitor mccain in hanoi... no other man has been honored by the enemy as mccain... however there was a woman who was honored by the enemy but her bust was never raised in hanoi. a lot of us where tortured and straved because mccain set a presidence of a model pow that none of the rest of us would do. mccain doesn't speak with us and does neghociate for us...because he knows he is a fraud and traitor...but he has got power like clinton to erase those who stand in his way,

-- SB Ryan G III (sbrg3@juno.com), February 29, 2000.

by the way, semper fi 66 - 71

-- SB Ryan G III (sbrg3@juno.com), February 29, 2000.

Dear Veteran, you are WRONG WRONG WRONG. You have a perfect right to vote as you please. However, you had better research this McCain better than you have. If his facial expressions are any indication of his feelings, may God help us all. McCain is a very very angry man. He also frightens me. You also need to research Hackworth out, he has the goods on him and so do the POWs. He is not Republican, he is a Democrat in hiding and a chip off Clinton's block.

-- janet Marsh (jmarsh4185@aol.com), February 29, 2000.

dear vietnamvet@class of68:

I had to leave for work before I could post on this thread-then there were no answers. I'm with you. I LIKE Big Bad John, and I think people need to understand he's not a man to be trifled with, and the operative word here is "man". He's not a wimp, he's a survivor and he's fighting a hell of a fight and doesn't have Mommy to hold his hand.

John McCain is definitely someone to make TPTB very nervous. Good. It's high time someone did. I didn't go to Nam, but I lost and am losing some people I love who did, because they did. It's fine to disagree, but if we want to be free to do so, we'd better get someone on board who had to pay for that freedom of choice and expression and might put a value on it.

-- mike in houston (mmorris67@hotmail.com), February 29, 2000.

I'm with you and Mike. I'm still sick over the defective gear issue. No, I'm not naive about the military. My family IS military, way back before we ever came to America. But I am afraid for my son, now. I have watched his father fight (and beat) Agent Orange cancer for almost sixteen years. We've gone through the agony of worrying about genetic damage when our daughter became pregnant. And, yes, we divorced: but Thank God I had the common sense and instinct to remain friends with him and try to be a support to him. My husband (now) is a Nam vet with hearing loss and other Nam associated problems but he does a bang up job of being a leader in our family. I'm sick to death of dope smoking, coke-snorting mental midgets who never left Mommy's lap trying to lead a country that's in the agonies of the consequences of the wars of the last three generations. My father is MIA(KIA for the convenience of the government) Korea. I hear POW and think of him. The critics of McCain can come do a few months in Texas prisons, we'll see if they sing a different song when they get out- and our jails bet Tiger Cages hands down.

-- charlie (cml@workmail.com), February 29, 2000.

Posting at mike's, Sysops.

This one is for C.D., with his broken hands and tattered POW papers. Get'em, John-Boy!

-- another government hack (keepwatching_2000@yahoo.com), February 29, 2000.

sounds like some of mccain's buddies hopped on this thread... chucks from the hilton... funny that chuck's mccain is a traitor in america...when america is actually chucks' anyway...haven't people like mccain made this america just another colony of the communist?! You vote for chuck's mccain and you hold you com[pliants when he sells us out later! and later when you little commie is president... I'll exercise my right with other real American and... This Country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

Abraham Lincoln First Inaugural Address Washington, D.C. March 4, 1861

-- SB Ryan G III (sbrg3@juno.com), March 01, 2000.

Vote how you want, Vet. But be sure you know what you're voting FOR. Re. the attached, I don't know Mark Smith personally, but I know of him, and his history. He has been active in POW issues for a long long time, including in some the Army didn't particularly like (the Smith-MacIntire lawsuit for example). This from Ted Sampley's US Veteran Dispatch at http://www.usvetdsp.com/main.shtml.

IMHO, if you vote for any of the front runners, you're forging your own chains. I hope you really want to wear them when they put them on you. McCain? He was a canary, not that I could have done any better under the same circumstances. But I'm not trying to build a political career off it either.

LPL =====================================================================

A "Flying Squad" Of Returned POWs Are Protecting McCain's Image By Major Mark A. Smith United States Army Retired Former POW (Vietnam)

Army Special Forces Captain Mark Smith was captured April 7, 1972 during a heated battle with the North Vietnamese in South Vietnam. Smith was held in a bamboo cage until he was freed during the general POW release in 1973.

In my opinion, there are no "sacred cows" when it comes to the office of the President of the United States of America. At this point, there is a "flying squad" of returned POWs from the Vietnam War protecting the image of Senator John S. McCain. One can but wonder why Senator McCain would require such a team. He is not under attack or even serious scrutiny by the "liberal media." TV commentators who usually attack anyone who shows a less than pristine bent for the most part are mum on the Arizona senator.

My concerns are simple. I believe that any and all of the intelligence held by U.S. Government agencies on Senator McCain's time as a POW must be made available to the media and public. There is too much danger of a President being held hostage by things in the files of Intelligence agencies and, even more dangerous, held in the files of foreign governments in Asia and Europe.

My intentions have nothing to do with any feelings I may harbor toward John McCain personally. I have none. My intentions in all of this have to do with him professionally.

They have to do with his treatment of [North Vietnamese Army Colonel] Bui Tin, who I consider nothing more than a "sent agent." They have to do with his simplistic attitude toward the issue of MIAs and his utterly vile behavior toward those who disagree with him, including POW/MIA family members.

Lastly, I feel for any of the "Keating Five" to have the audacity to make "Campaign Reform" the cornerstone of his platform is the height of hypocrisy. He took the money right along with the others. To claim he did not know is not the type of answer one who aspires to be President should give in my opinion. He was responsible but, he did everything in his power to shift the blame. He sounded too much like Clinton for me. He disappointed me in that.

I don't care if he has a temper unless he decides to vent it on an aging MIA mother, and he did just that. I can't forgive that and no one else should.

MIAs? I wrote then-Congressman McCain while still in the Army, from Korea, about the MIAs. Senator Denton wrote to me encouraging me to trust the Government. I didn't like the answer, but I got an answer from Senator Denton. My letter to McCain was answered by DIA. I wrote to him as one of the few POWs the Communists returned along with himself, and he checked nothing. So much for John's concern about MIAs.

A friend of mine was with Admiral McCain when he came to meet his son upon his return to U.S. control. When he reminded Senator McCain of this, John responded with a tirade and claimed that he received no "special treatment" and even denied his father was there. I'm sorry, but that was just a lie.

There was deep concern among the intelligence community about John McCain. His interviews and statements from Hanoi and pictures of him in an actual hospital gave great worries to many, including Bill Colby himself. His hero image was not nearly as solid in 1973 as it is now. That may have been wrong, but it was a fact.

I don't know why John did many of the things he did in captivity and since, but I do know that none of this is off limits, when it concerns someone running for President.

Andrew Jackson was a war hero and he and his wife endured terrible rumors, innuendo and the washing of dirty laundry. If "Ole Hickory" was not immune, someone captured by the enemy also is not.

Some are issuing damning statements about Senator McCain, which I have never seen anything to justify. Unless there are verifiable facts to back them up, these people should shut up. Most importantly, Vietnam Veterans have some serious questions to ask about which the media seems too timid to even venture a query. These must be answered and answered now.

Lastly, for returned POWs to stand up and say that no MIAs could have been alive after 1973 "Because we knew everyone in the system," is a self-serving lie and has no place in the utterances of honorable men. If they truly do not know better, they should support their candidate and keep their mouths shut about MIAs. They know nothing of remains still reaking of decay long after the war, nor have they ever been in the arena of which they try to speak as "experts." All of this to support a political candidate for President? That is what McCain is and the leadership of our nation is too important to take anyone's word on a candidate.

After all, there is a large segment of time when none of these POWs were with McCain in Hanoi. To state or even insinuate otherwise is to lie and that is unacceptable, even if one believes all that John now says.

Like I have said in the past, I hope John is everything that he claims to be, but that does not excuse giving military intelligence to the enemy, his supposed "open mind" on MIAs, his treatment of MIA family members, or his attacks on [former Marine POW] PFC Garwood, a man he never heard of as a POW.

Perhaps he could address why all those boys in Hanoi were on the radio I had to listen to in 1972-73 and none were being tortured. Contrary to the carefully contrived belief within the media, the vast majority that I heard were "highly trained and disciplined pilots" and not a bunch of "Army and Marine" enlisted men.

I find it totally unprofessional, for professional military men to attack people who have legitimate questions about a political candidate regardless of who he is or who his father was. I find many things said about Senator McCain to be unsavory and with out merit.

Those things are easily dealt with by John's campaign staff. His friends have every right to defend him on these things, but they have no right to issue blanket statements about McCain's captivity unless they were with him all the way. They were not unless his claim of isolation is a fabrication.

One would hope the same people are more accurate in their description of McCain than they were in their totally meritless claim of "knowing everyone in the system." This is a self-serving lie and a totally dishonorable one at that. You knew? You knew nothing!

In closing, let me say this. The very insinuation that anyone who challenges John McCain is a lesser person in the returned POW community is so much bunk.

This is political, pure and simple. John must be judged as a candidate for President, on what his past actions truly were. Where he has stood on the issues as a politician are open to scrutiny and he is also certainly allowed his defenders.

However, to put out totally inaccurate statements about what the POWs in Hanoi knew about who was a POW and who was not, and who collaborated and who did not, while ignoring the dishonorable actions of those let back into the fold in the last minutes of captivity, has no merit.

We are talking about the leadership of the Nation, and I and others have serious questions about McCain's suitability for that position. We are allowed to have these positions and there is no requirement based on honor that requires us to remain mum.

Furthermore, there is no challenge as to our right to be judged on our performance on the battlefield or in prison. I welcome anyone to debate me on my performance in either scenario and I find the insinuation that we in the jungle somehow suffered less or served with less honor to be not only professionally and historically reprehensible, but, also laughable.

Perhaps some in our number learned the value of propaganda a little too well during our captivity.

I will not be steam rolled by a "flying squad" of propagandists. I want some damned answers, not another self-serving book that builds the images and egos of my high-flying compatriots from Hanoi.

-- Lee (lplapinXOUT@hotmail.com), March 01, 2000.