Hill Kemp brings us a scathing look at John McCain’s service record. This is part of the move, counter-move, counter-counter-move we see in campaigns. McCain can’t remember how many houses he has. Obama criticizes him for not knowing how many houses he has when so many are losing the only houses they have. McCain, somewhat unintuitively, defends against this line of attack by pointing out that he was a P.O.W. Obama supporters, seeing that the P.O.W. record is going to be used as a shield against any criticism find a need to weaken that shield. And now we’re hearing more about McCain’s pre-P.O.W. war record.
Kemp’s column discusses McCain’s suspected involvement in starting a fire on the U.S.S. Forrestal that killed 134 people. Wikipedia’s entry mentions that McCain was involved but does not single him out as culpable. Kemp’s column describes the crew members as looking for the “hotdog pilot” who “wet-started” his A-4E Skyhawk fighter jet and triggered the incident.
“Wet-starting” means pooling jet fuel in the engine before starting it to send a flash of flame out the engine exhaust. (XA4D-1 Skyhawk BuNo 137812) This was done to shake up the pilot in the F-4 fighter behind him. But in the confusion a rocket went off, bombs were dropped on the ship deck and the chain reaction disaster was underway.
Kemp’s column further cites McCain’s hasty removal from the Forrestal and posits McCain’s position as son of an admiral for getting him out of there on a helicopter that should have been carrying wounded crewmen.
I have zero background knowledge on the Forrestal and, as such, can’t yet form a good opinion on whether this is one of those conspiracies ginned up solely for political purposes and then repeated by those who want to believe it for political purposes or whether this is one of those events relegated to “conspiracy” status merely because the culpable party is connected well enough to prevent the official version from pinning the blame.
In any event, if McCain intends on using his history as a P.O.W. as an all-purpose shield; that shield will have to be weakened somehow. Looking at McCain’s non-P.O.W. service record is likely a good start since his prior performance was largely undistinguished and such career as he had seems attributable to his status as Navy royalty with his father and grandfather having been admirals.
Update The Hoosier Pundit offers a rebuttal.
If the Republicans really wanted a genuine VietNam war hero and ace fighter pilot, they should have nominated Duke Cunningham. He was quite the warrior and never got shot down once.
.
Duke Cunningham in so very many ways represents the essence of the GOP so well !
.
I wonder if he’ll watch the Republican Convention on his tiny black and white penitentiary-issue TV?
Repeat after me: “Burning Boat Victims for Truth”
Ok, Corsi… Ready. Set. Attack!
It seems like it would be trivial to find how what pilot it was. They have logs for every takeoff, how hard would it be to at least pin it down to maybe three pilots? The pilot behind would be one of the suspects, so there is the eye witness. What am I missing?
You’re missing the fact that John’s dad was the Admiral in charge of naval operations in the Pacific.
Probably John didn’t trigger the fire. Also, probably it wasn’t investigated properly. As we learned from the Swiftboat situation–where the very people who recommended Kerry for medals 40 years ago suddenly developed a clearer recollection of events after all those years–sometimes facts come to light pretty late in the game. Probably it would be irresponsible not to speculate wildly. At least that’s what the Republicans taught me.
Some have also commented that he sang so profusely in captivity and gave such good information that they had to curtail bombing Hanoi. He also made propaganda broadcasts against U.S. soldiers. If he were the Democratic nominee, he would be getting ripped apart by ads about this stuff.
Maybe none of the above is true. Sadly, McCain got legislation passed that keeps his debriefings classified.
Yeah, and he strangles puppies for fun too. Lighten up Francis.
Well, hell, I’m not gonna hold a little puppy strangling against a guy.
That was Giuliani’s wife who was the puppy killer (as a medical device rep, she would demonstrate on dogs, killing them).
Or maybe you’re confusing him with Bill Frist, who would find stray cats to dissect as part of a self-styled anatomy review.
I should clarify– Giuliani’s third wife. The present one. I think she’s his third.
Saw somewhere the campaign slogan “Obama/Biden ’08: Two Houses, Two Spouses.”
Careful, Doug. The right-wingnuts will think they wife-swap.