Check this video out of McCain the War Hero
freindlyfired
Posts: 297
Did you catch the previously unknown footage of McCain on Thursday night by a Swedish TV station? It was from March 14, 1973, when McCain was released by the Vietnamese. This was not the tortured cripple of the “returning hero” clips and photos we’ve been seeing. He looks pretty spry, albeit with a slight limp.Here’s the link to the news coverage on SVT’s “Rapport”
http://svt.se/play?a=1244518
I suggest reading first then watching the video.
[Images of journalist Erik Eriksson today at his writing desk.] It was Erik Eriksson, foreign correspondent for Swedish Television covering the Vietnam War during the 1960s and 70s who found these images while doing research for his book on his time in Vietnam.
[CLU on determined but rather healthy looking McCain in a group of POWs standing ready for release. Vietnamese speaker [off] calling out the names of the POWs in turn.]
- John Sidney McCain
[found footage: McCain walking briskly and with a slight limp across a square towards an US military officer. He salutes, and shakes hands. US soldiers and officials all around.]
Eriksson: He doesn’t look like he’s a wreck. The image we have been fed was that he had been violently battered and broken when he got home, like a wreck.
[found footage: McCain salutes again, walks briskly off. Cut to another officer. Cut to McCain stepping off a (military?) bus, followed by other passengers (released POWs?)]
Eriksson: But these here images don’t show this at all.
Newscaster: These images which are shown here for the first time where taken on March 14, 1973, the same day McCain was released after five and a half year as POW in communistic North Vietnam.
[CLU Eriksson]
Eriksson: The image which has been put forward – maybe not by himself, primarily, but by his campaign manager – of course, is totally defined by his position as a presidential candidate.
[Clip from McCain bio RNC video.]]
VO: “A year came Hanoi. Critically injured, with wounds never properly addressed, for the next five and a half years John was tortured and dragged from one filthy prison to another.”
[Found footage. CLU McCain walking past a large group of onlooking soldiers. ]
Newscaster: John McCain was a bomber pilot, and he was shot down during his 23rd mission in North Vietnam, the start of his five and half years as POW.
[McCain campaign video with McCain looking haggard and in sickbay.]
Newscaster: These pictures are from his campaign video. Why, Erik Eriksson wonders,
[Found Footage: MC Cain stepping down an airplane gangway]
does McCain leave Vietnam walking on his own legs, but does walk with crutches later on, like here
[the well known photo shoot McCain and Nixon shaking hands]
…when he, much later, half a year after his release, meets with President Nixon.
[Original Soundtrack McCain campaign propaganda. The RNC biog release, I assume]
Five and a half years later, the war was over and the..[fade over to]
Newscaster: The explanation, according to the former editor in chief of Dagens Nyheter, [largest national morning paper] Hans Bergström, being that McCain in summer 1973 had undergone an operation for a wrongly healed leg fracture. Bergström has written a biography about McCain.
[Still the Nixon shot]
Soundtrack RNC biog :”He chose to spend his life serving the country he loved”
[Still: Present day McCain shaking hands with soldiers]
Newscaster: McCain’s status as a war hero is exploited vigorously by his campaign staff in the fight for the presidency.
[RNC biog again]
“Some called him a warrior, a soldier, naval aviator….”
[CLU Erisson]
Eriksson: The targets they had been assigned, of course, were so-called military targets. But I travelled in this country after these extensive bombing campaigns, when I saw these so-called military targets they bombed. I travelled in these areas where each and every town had been reduced to rubble. USA [historians have been reported ] to have estimated they killed about one thousand civilians per week during these bombing campaigns, a number which came to public knowledge later.
[cut to young Eriksson reporting from Vietnam War]
[Eriksson original war report from totally flattened town. Vietnamese trying to clear the ruins]
“They are clearing the ruins with an enormous frenzy, hoping to, maybe, save the people buried in the ruins. I haven’t any reports yet how many they are, four or five it is rumored, but it might be more. They dug out one lifeless person, a man giving no sign of life, most likely he was dead.”
[End of clip.]
Schroder correctly adds:
I assume such a news coverage would be totally impossible on US TV, especially the critical reflections on the USA’s war in Vietnam, and the juxtaposition of McCain’s heroic bombing raids with the suffering of the bombed Vietnamese on the ground. But then, of course, the main Swedish TV is public, not privately owned. Not to say that we do not get some propaganda, but nothing like what’s dished up in the USA. I follow the major papers and some TV on the web, and I fail to understand how the people put up with this. If Goebbels still were around, he would eat his heart out with envy.
As far as I am concerned no one who flies up in the air carpetbombing a helpless civilian population, is a hero. McCain and others make out like these were Red Baron dog fighter times, or WW II RAF pilots who ran a much, much higher risk. The real heroes – if one wants to call them that **– in this totally immoral war were the grunts who actually had to meet the “enemy”. The same of course goes for the “heroic” bomber pilots in the present immoral wars in Afghanistan/Pakistan and Iraq.
It is really depressing from our perspective, that such a large part of the US voters seem to be addicted to this kind of false heroic myths, to such a degree that one can build a whole election on some bomb raids 40 years ago committed on a hapless population by a greedy foreign power. It may well be that McCain felt at the time that he was doing the right thing, and felt proud of it. But it is depressing that 40 years later he still is proud of it, instead of regretting what he has doen and hang his head in shame. Even more depressing that close to half the voters lap this up.
And most depressing of all that even Obama and the Dems feel they have to pay lip service to this immoral hogwash and constantly debase themselves in worship of McCain the Hero.
Woe is us.
http://svt.se/play?a=1244518
I suggest reading first then watching the video.
[Images of journalist Erik Eriksson today at his writing desk.] It was Erik Eriksson, foreign correspondent for Swedish Television covering the Vietnam War during the 1960s and 70s who found these images while doing research for his book on his time in Vietnam.
[CLU on determined but rather healthy looking McCain in a group of POWs standing ready for release. Vietnamese speaker [off] calling out the names of the POWs in turn.]
- John Sidney McCain
[found footage: McCain walking briskly and with a slight limp across a square towards an US military officer. He salutes, and shakes hands. US soldiers and officials all around.]
Eriksson: He doesn’t look like he’s a wreck. The image we have been fed was that he had been violently battered and broken when he got home, like a wreck.
[found footage: McCain salutes again, walks briskly off. Cut to another officer. Cut to McCain stepping off a (military?) bus, followed by other passengers (released POWs?)]
Eriksson: But these here images don’t show this at all.
Newscaster: These images which are shown here for the first time where taken on March 14, 1973, the same day McCain was released after five and a half year as POW in communistic North Vietnam.
[CLU Eriksson]
Eriksson: The image which has been put forward – maybe not by himself, primarily, but by his campaign manager – of course, is totally defined by his position as a presidential candidate.
[Clip from McCain bio RNC video.]]
VO: “A year came Hanoi. Critically injured, with wounds never properly addressed, for the next five and a half years John was tortured and dragged from one filthy prison to another.”
[Found footage. CLU McCain walking past a large group of onlooking soldiers. ]
Newscaster: John McCain was a bomber pilot, and he was shot down during his 23rd mission in North Vietnam, the start of his five and half years as POW.
[McCain campaign video with McCain looking haggard and in sickbay.]
Newscaster: These pictures are from his campaign video. Why, Erik Eriksson wonders,
[Found Footage: MC Cain stepping down an airplane gangway]
does McCain leave Vietnam walking on his own legs, but does walk with crutches later on, like here
[the well known photo shoot McCain and Nixon shaking hands]
…when he, much later, half a year after his release, meets with President Nixon.
[Original Soundtrack McCain campaign propaganda. The RNC biog release, I assume]
Five and a half years later, the war was over and the..[fade over to]
Newscaster: The explanation, according to the former editor in chief of Dagens Nyheter, [largest national morning paper] Hans Bergström, being that McCain in summer 1973 had undergone an operation for a wrongly healed leg fracture. Bergström has written a biography about McCain.
[Still the Nixon shot]
Soundtrack RNC biog :”He chose to spend his life serving the country he loved”
[Still: Present day McCain shaking hands with soldiers]
Newscaster: McCain’s status as a war hero is exploited vigorously by his campaign staff in the fight for the presidency.
[RNC biog again]
“Some called him a warrior, a soldier, naval aviator….”
[CLU Erisson]
Eriksson: The targets they had been assigned, of course, were so-called military targets. But I travelled in this country after these extensive bombing campaigns, when I saw these so-called military targets they bombed. I travelled in these areas where each and every town had been reduced to rubble. USA [historians have been reported ] to have estimated they killed about one thousand civilians per week during these bombing campaigns, a number which came to public knowledge later.
[cut to young Eriksson reporting from Vietnam War]
[Eriksson original war report from totally flattened town. Vietnamese trying to clear the ruins]
“They are clearing the ruins with an enormous frenzy, hoping to, maybe, save the people buried in the ruins. I haven’t any reports yet how many they are, four or five it is rumored, but it might be more. They dug out one lifeless person, a man giving no sign of life, most likely he was dead.”
[End of clip.]
Schroder correctly adds:
I assume such a news coverage would be totally impossible on US TV, especially the critical reflections on the USA’s war in Vietnam, and the juxtaposition of McCain’s heroic bombing raids with the suffering of the bombed Vietnamese on the ground. But then, of course, the main Swedish TV is public, not privately owned. Not to say that we do not get some propaganda, but nothing like what’s dished up in the USA. I follow the major papers and some TV on the web, and I fail to understand how the people put up with this. If Goebbels still were around, he would eat his heart out with envy.
As far as I am concerned no one who flies up in the air carpetbombing a helpless civilian population, is a hero. McCain and others make out like these were Red Baron dog fighter times, or WW II RAF pilots who ran a much, much higher risk. The real heroes – if one wants to call them that **– in this totally immoral war were the grunts who actually had to meet the “enemy”. The same of course goes for the “heroic” bomber pilots in the present immoral wars in Afghanistan/Pakistan and Iraq.
It is really depressing from our perspective, that such a large part of the US voters seem to be addicted to this kind of false heroic myths, to such a degree that one can build a whole election on some bomb raids 40 years ago committed on a hapless population by a greedy foreign power. It may well be that McCain felt at the time that he was doing the right thing, and felt proud of it. But it is depressing that 40 years later he still is proud of it, instead of regretting what he has doen and hang his head in shame. Even more depressing that close to half the voters lap this up.
And most depressing of all that even Obama and the Dems feel they have to pay lip service to this immoral hogwash and constantly debase themselves in worship of McCain the Hero.
Woe is us.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
This is a such a stretch. Even if nobody laid a finger on him and they fed him his favorite meal every night, he was still imprisoned for all that time.
Yeah, I don't think I ever called Kerry a coward/traitor.