I do not like John McCain

I don't know why.

Maybe because he's adocating perpetual war. Maybe its because he wants America to occupy the Middle East for a hundred years. (Can you believe anyone would have the nerve to say something like that?! Like anyone in 1908 could possibly imagine what life is like today, and plan ahead for international policy of today!)

The mainstream media has regularly called him the "media darling". I am dumbfounded. There's nothing darling about this guy. He's monotone in voice, extreamist in policy and dull in appearance. He doesn't look or talk like a president. Unless you count the fact that he lies about the current state of the war. ("We're winning." "The surge is working.")

Can anyone point to anything about him presidential?

I know he was a tortured POW and is against torture. Good! But will he be closing the illegal prisons and detention centers for supposed terrorists? No. Will he end this for-profit war in the Middle East? No. And that big, sweet bear hug he gave President Bush in the photo-opt tells me much of what we American's need to know about him.

I don't like John McCain.

McCain is a putz, not only that but he is older than Reagan was when he ran for president. Me thinks he will be senile before he would finish a term in office.
I have opinions on the others but I'm writing this from an internet cafe' and time is money.

do i see the libs trembling over the inevitability of BIG MAc



i think u may not like him cuz u probably havnt heard of him until recently, but if you have been paying attention for the past 20 years you wouldnt say such things about this man

also the fact that he spent 5 years in a POW camp doesnt mean its good cuz hes against torture. u are barely grasping the surface:

John Mcain is shot down over vietnam faithfully serving his country.

the enemy drags his lifeless body away and toss him a a dungen and leave him for dead

they later find out he is the son of a very promenemt admiral and put him in the hospital

they throw him back in the dungen with a full body cast where his fellow captive patriots care for him and slowly nurse him back to health

once healed they torture and rebreak his arms several times to the point where he cant even raise his hands up anymore till this day

after the toture they offer to release him due to his fathers high status in the US military.

John Mcain refuses to leave stating there are others who have been there many years longer than him.

they toss him in solitary confinement for 2 years for this

he survives this dark period and is released five years after his plane was shot down after the end of the war in Vietnam.

many things come to mind for me.

Honor
Courage
Selflessness
Compassion
Defy
fighter
not a quiter
strong
empathiser
walks the walk
talks the talk
patriot
strength
humility
hope
achievment
success
optimistic
doesnt make excuses

Vietnam operations

John Sidney McCain IIIAugust 29, 1936 – presentAllegianceUnited States Navy (Naval aviation)Years of service1958–1981RankCaptainUnitUSS Forrestal (CV-59)Battles/warsVietnamAwardsSilver Star
Legion of Merit
Distinguished Flying Cross
Bronze Star
Purple HeartOther workNaval liaison to the United States Senate, United States Senator from Arizona, Presidential candidate
In Spring 1967 Forrestal was assigned to join Operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing campaign against North Vietnam as part of the Vietnam War.[14][26] The alpha strikes flown from Forrestal were against specific, pre-selected infrastructure targets such as arms depots, factories, and bridges;[27] they were quite dangerous due to the Soviet-designed and supplied anti-aircraft system fielded by the North Vietnamese Air Defense Force.[27] McCain's first five attack missions over North Vietnam went without incident,[16] and while still unconcerned with minor Navy regulations, McCain had by now garnered the reputation of a serious aviator.[19] But McCain and his fellow pilots were already frustrated by Rolling Thunder's infamous micromanagement from Washington;[27] he would later write that "The target list was so restricted that we had to go back and hit the same targets over and over again.... Most of our pilots flying the missions believed that our targets were virtually worthless. In all candor, we thought our civilian commanders were complete idiots who didn’t have the least notion of what it took to win the war."[26]
By now a Lieutenant Commander, McCain was again almost killed in action on July 29, 1967 while serving on the Forrestal, operating at Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin. The crew was preparing to launch attacks when a Zuni rocket from an F-4 Phantom was accidentally fired across the carrier's deck. The rocket struck McCain's A-4E Skyhawk as the jet was preparing for launch.[28][29] The impact ruptured the Skyhawk's fuel tank, which ignited the fuel and knocked two bombs loose. McCain escaped from his jet by climbing out of the cockpit, working himself to the nose of the jet, and jumping off its refueling probe onto the burning deck of the aircraft carrier. Ninety seconds after the impact, one of the bombs exploded underneath his airplane. McCain was struck in the legs and chest by shrapnel. The ensuing fire killed 132 sailors, injured 62 others, destroyed at least 20 aircraft, and took 24 hours to control.[30] A day or two after the Forrestal incident, McCain told New York Times reporter R. W. Apple, Jr. in Saigon that, "It's a difficult thing to say. But now that I've seen what the bombs and the napalm did to the people on our ship, I'm not so sure that I want to drop any more of that stuff on North Vietnam."[31] But a change of course was unlikely, as McCain said, "I always wanted to be in the Navy. I was born into it and I never really considered another profession. But I always had trouble with the regimentation."[31]
As Forrestal headed for repairs, McCain volunteered to join the VA-163 Saints on board the short-staffed USS Oriskany, which had earlier endured its own deck fire disaster[16] and whose squadrons had suffered heavy losses during Rolling Thunder, with one-third of their pilots killed or captured during 1967.[16] By late October 1967, McCain had flown a total of 22 bombing missions.[32]

Prisoner of war


John McCain being pulled out of Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi and about to become a prisoner of war.[33] October 26, 1967.


On October 26, 1967, McCain was flying as part of a 20-plane attack against a thermal power plant in central Hanoi, a heavily defended target area that had previously been off-limits to U.S. raids.[34][35] McCain's A-4 Skyhawk was shot down by a Soviet-made SA-2 anti-aircraft missile[35] while pulling up after dropping its bombs.[36] McCain fractured both arms and a leg in being hit and ejecting from his plane.[37] He nearly drowned after he parachuted into Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi.[34] After he regained consciousness, a mob gathered around him, spat on him, kicked him and stripped him of his clothing.[38] Others crushed his shoulder with the butt of a rifle and bayoneted him in his left foot and abdominal area; he was then transported to Hanoi's main prison.[38] Although McCain was badly wounded, his captors refused to put him in the hospital, deciding he would soon die anyway. They beat and interrogated him, but McCain only offered his name, rank, serial number, and date of birth.[38] Only when the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a top admiral did they give him medical care[38] and announce his capture. At this point, two days after McCain's plane went down, that event and his status as a POW made the front page of The

New York Times.[31]
McCain spent six weeks in a hospital, receiving marginal care, was interviewed by a French television reporter whose report was carried on CBS, and was observed by a variety of North Vietnamese, including the famous General Vo Nguyen Giap. Many of the North Vietnamese observers assumed that he must be part of America's political-military-economic elite.[38] Now having lost 50 pounds, in a chest cast, and with his hair turned white,[34] McCain was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Hanoi in December 1967, into a cell with two other Americans who did not expect him to live a week (one was Bud Day, a future Medal of Honor recipient); they nursed McCain and kept him alive.[39] In March 1968, McCain was put into solitary confinement, where he would be for two years.[38] In July 1968, McCain's father was named Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC), stationed in Honolulu and commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater.[3] McCain was immediately offered a chance to return home early:[34] the North Vietnamese wanted a mercy-showing propaganda coup for the outside world, and a message that only privilege mattered that they could use against the other POWs.[38] McCain turned down the offer of repatriation due to the Code of Conduct of "first in, first out": he would only accept the offer if every man taken in before him was released as well.[40] McCain's refusal to be released was even remarked upon by North Vietnamese officials to U.S. envoy Averell Harriman at the ongoing Paris Peace Talks.[34]
In August 1968, a program of vigorous torture methods began on McCain, using rope bindings into painful positions and beatings every two hours, at the same time as he was suffering from dysentery.[38][34] Teeth and bones were broken again as was McCain's spirit; the beginnings of a suicide attempt was stopped by guards.[34] After four days of this, McCain signed an anti-American propaganda "confession" that said he was a "black criminal" and an "air pirate",[34] although he used stilted Communist jargon and ungrammatical language to signal the statement was forced.[41] He would later write, "I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine."[38] His injuries to this day have left him incapable of raising his arms above his head.[42] His captors tried to force him to sign a second statement, and this time he refused. He received two to three beatings per week because of his continued refusal.[43] Other American POWs were similarly tortured and maltreated in order to extract "confessions".[38] On one occasion when McCain was physically coerced to give the names of members of his squadron, he supplied them the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line.[41] On another occasion, a guard surreptitiously loosened McCain's painful rope bindings for a night; when he later saw McCain on Christmas Day, he stood next to McCain and silently drew a cross in the dirt with his foot[44] (decades later, McCain would relate this Good Samaritan story during his presidential campaigns, as a testament to faith and humanity[45][46]). McCain refused to meet with various anti-war peace groups coming to Hanoi, such as those led by David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, and Rennie Davis, not wanting to give either them or the North Vietnamese a propaganda victory based on his connection to his father.[38]
In October 1969, treatment of McCain and the other POWs suddenly improved, after a badly beaten and weakened POW who had been released that summer disclosed to the world press the conditions to which they were being subjected.[38] In December 1969, McCain was transferred to Hoa Loa Prison, which later became famous via its POW nickname of the "Hanoi Hilton".[38] McCain continued to refuse to see anti-war groups or journalists sympathetic to the North Vietnamese regime;[38] to one visitor who did speak with him, McCain later wrote, "I told him I had no remorse about what I did, and that I would do it over again if the same opportunity presented itself."[38] McCain and other prisoners were moved around to different camps at times, but conditions over the next several years were generally more tolerable than they had been before.[38]
Altogether McCain was held as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five and a half years. The Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 27, 1973, ending direct U.S. involvement in the war, but the Operation Homecoming arrangements for POWs took longer; McCain was finally released from captivity on March 15, 1973,[47] having been a POW for almost an extra five years due to his refusal to accept the out-of-sequence repatriation offer.[48]

Return to United States


President Richard Nixon greets the released John McCain at a White House reception honoring returning POWs. May 24, 1973.


Upon his return to the United States, McCain was reunited with his wife Carol, who had suffered her own crippling, near-death ordeal during his captivity, due to an automobile accident in December 1969 that left her facing months of operations and physical therapy;[49] by the time he saw her again she was four inches shorter, on crutches, and substantially heavier.[50] As a returned POW, McCain became a celebrity of sorts: The New York Times ran a photo of him getting off the plane at Clark Air Base in the Philippines; he published a long cover story describing his ordeal and his support for the Nixon administration's handling of the war in U.S. News & World Report;[38] he participated in several parades and personal appearances; and a photograph of him on crutches shaking the hand of President Richard Nixon at a White House reception for returning POWs became iconic.[49]
McCain underwent treatment for his injuries, and attended the National War College in Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. during 1973–1974.[49][17] Few thought McCain could fly again, but he was determined to try, and engaged in nine months of grueling, painful physical therapy, especially to get his knees to bend again.[50] By late 1974 McCain had recuperated just enough to pass his flight physical[50] and have his flight status reinstated,[49] and he became Executive Officer and then Commanding Officer of the VA-174 Hellrazors, the East Coast A-7 Corsair II Navy training squadron stationed at Naval Air Station Cecil Field outside Jacksonville in Florida and the largest attack squadron in the Navy.[49][17][51] McCain's leadership abilities were credited with turning around a mediocre unit, improving its aircraft readiness and pilot safety metrics and winning the squadron its first Meritorious Unit Commendation,[50] and while some senior officers resented McCain's presence as favoritism due to his father, junior officers rallied to him and helped him qualify for A-7 carrier landings.[50]
During the time in Jacksonville, the McCains' marriage began to falter.[52] McCain had extramarital affairs,[52] and he would later say, "My marriage's collapse was attributable to my own selfishness and immaturity more than it was to Vietnam, and I cannot escape blame by pointing a finger at the war. The blame was entirely mine."[52] His wife Carol would later echo those sentiments, saying "I attribute [the breakup of our marriage] more to John turning 40 and wanting to be 25 again than I do to anything else."[52]

Senate liaison and second marriage


Interview with McCain on April 24, 1974, after his return home.


In 1976, McCain briefly thought of running for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida.[53] Instead, based upon the recommendation of Admiral James L. Holloway III,[49] in 1977 McCain became the Navy's liaison to the U.S. Senate.[53] Returning to the Washington, D.C. area, McCain soon became the leader of the Russell Senate Office Building liaison operation, and would later say it represented "[my] real entry into the world of politics and the beginning of my second career as a public servant."[49] McCain was influenced by senators of both parties, and especially by a strong bond with Republican Senator John Tower of Texas, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.[49] McCain was still living with his wife, although they had had one separation during this time.[50]
In 1979, while attending a military reception in Hawaii, McCain met and fell in love with Cindy Lou Hensley, 17 years his junior, a teacher from Phoenix, Arizona who was the daughter of James Willis Hensley, a wealthy Anheuser-Busch distributor and wife Marguerite Smith.[52] By now it was clear that McCain's naval career was stalled; he would never be promoted to admiral as his grandfather and father had been.[50] McCain filed for and obtained an uncontested divorce from his wife Carol in Florida on April 2, 1980;[20] he gave her a generous settlement, including houses in Virginia and Florida and financial support for her ongoing medical treatments, and they would remain on good terms.[52] McCain and Hensley were married on May 17, 1980[14] in Phoenix, Arizona, with Senators William Cohen and Gary Hart as best man and groomsman.[52] McCain's children felt upset with him and did not attend the wedding,[50] but after several years they reconciled with him and Cindy.[50][22]
McCain retired from the Navy in 1981 as a Captain.[12] During his military career, he received a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, the Legion of Merit, the Purple Heart, and a Distinguished Flying Cross.[54]

Political career

U.S. Congressman and more children


Living in Phoenix, McCain went to work for his new father-in-law Jim Hensley's large Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship as Vice President of Public Relations,[52] where he gained political support among the local business community,[53] meeting powerful figures such as banker Charles Keating, Jr., real estate developer Fife Symington III,[52] and newspaper publisher Darrow "Duke" Tully,[53] all the while looking for an electoral opportunity.[52] When John Jacob Rhodes, Jr., the longtime Republican congressman from Arizona's 1st congressional district, announced his retirement, McCain ran for the seat as a Republican in 1982.[55] McCain faced two experienced state legislators in the Republican nomination process, and as a newcomer to the state was hit with repeated charges of being a carpetbagger.[52] Finally at a candidates forum he gave a famous refutation to a voter making the charge:
A Phoenix Gazette columnist would later label this "the most devastating response to a potentially troublesome political issue I've ever heard."[52] With the assistance of some local political endorsements and his Washington connections, as well as effective television advertising, partly financed by $167,000 that his wife lent to his campaign (which helped him outspend his opponents),[53] and with support of Tully's The Arizona Republic (the state's most powerful newspaper),[53] McCain won the highly contested primary election in September 1982.[52] By comparison, the general election two months later became an easy lopsided victory for him in the heavily Republican district.[52]
McCain made an immediate impression in Congress. He was elected the president of the 1983 Republican freshman class of representatives.[52] He was assigned to the Committee on Interior Affairs, the Select Committee on Aging, and eventually to the chairmanship of the Republican Task Force on Indian Affairs.[56] He sponsored a number of Indian Affairs bills, dealing mainly with giving distribution of lands to reservations and tribal tax status; most of these bills were unsuccessful.[57] McCain’s politics at this point were mainly in line with President Ronald Reagan, from issues ranging from the economy to the Soviet Union;[58] however, his vote against a resolution allowing President Reagan to keep U.S. Marines deployed as part of the Multinational Force in Lebanon, on the grounds that he "[did] not foresee obtainable objectives in Lebanon," would seem prescient after the catastrophic Beirut barracks bombing a month later;[52] this vote would also start his national media reputation as a political maverick.[52] McCain won re-election to the House easily in 1984.[52] In the new term McCain got the Indian Economic Development Act of 1985 signed into law.[59] In 1985 he returned to Vietnam with Walter Cronkite for a CBS News special, and saw the monument put up next to where the famous downed "air pirate Ma Can" had been pulled from the Hanoi lake;[60] it was the first of several return trips McCain would make there.[60] In 1986 he broke ranks again in voting to successfully override Reagan's veto of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act that imposed sanctions against South Africa.[61]

In 1984 McCain and his wife Cindy had their first child together, daughter Meghan. She was followed in 1986 by son John Sidney IV (known as "Jack"), and in 1988 by son James.[62] In 1991, Cindy McCain brought an abandoned three-month old girl, who badly needed medical treatment for a severe cleft palate, to the U.S. from a Bangladeshi orphanage run by Mother Teresa;[63] the McCains decided to adopt her, and named her Bridget.[64] A drawn-out adoption process began, slowed down by uncertainty over the exact fate of the girl's father,[65] but in 1993 the adoption was ruled final.[66] McCain then stood by his wife when she disclosed in 1994 a previous addiction to painkillers and said that she hoped the publicity would give other drug addicts courage in their struggles.[67] Beginning in the early 1990s, McCain began attending the 6,000-member North Phoenix Baptist Church in Arizona, part of the Southern Baptist Convention, later saying "[I found] the message and fundamental nature more fulfilling than I did in the Episcopal church. ... They're great believers in redemption, and so am I."[68] Nevertheless he still identified himself as Episcopalian,[68] and while Cindy and two of their children were baptized into the Baptist church, he was not.[68

U.S. Senator


Senator John Sidney McCain III


McCain decided to run for United States Senator from Arizona in 1986, when longtime American conservative icon and Arizona fixture Barry Goldwater retired.[69] No Republican would oppose McCain in the primary, and as described by his press secretary Torie Clarke, McCain's political strength convinced his most formidable possible Democratic opponent, Governor Bruce Babbitt, not to run for the senate seat.[69] Instead McCain faced a weaker opponent, former state legislator Richard Kimball, a young politician with an offbeat personality who slept on his office floor[70] and whom McCain's allies in the Arizona press characterized as having "terminal weirdness."[69] McCain's associations with Duke Tully, who by now had been disgraced for having concocted a ficticious military record, as well as revelations of father-in-law Jim Hensley's past brushes with the law, became campaign issues, but in the end McCain won the election easily with 60 percent of the vote to Kimball's 40 percent.[69][53]
Upon entering the Senate in 1987, McCain became a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, with whom he had formerly done his Navy liaison work; he also joined the Commerce Committee and the Indian Affairs Committee.[69] He was a strong supporter of the Gramm-Rudman legislation that enforced automatic spending cuts in the case of budget deficits.[71] McCain soon gained national visibility, delivering an emotional, impassioned speech about his time as a POW at the 1988 Republican National Convention[72] being mentioned by the press as a short list vice-presidential running mate for Republican nominee George H. W. Bush,[72][69] and being named chairman of Veterans for Bush.[73] In 1989, he became a staunch defender of his friend John Tower's doomed nomination for U.S. Secretary of Defense; McCain butted heads with Moral Majority co-founder Paul Weyrich — who was challenging Tower regarding alleged heavy drinking and extramarital affairs[69] — and thus began McCain's difficult relationship with the Christian right, as he would later write that Weyrich was "a pompous self-serving son of a bitch."[69]

I'll let mccain do the talking.....

YouTube - McCain: 100 years in Iraq "would be fine with me"

YouTube - John McCain Says More Wars

YouTube - McCain is an idiot!

We dont have many of these kinda guys left in this world

Smirgen said:

I'll let mccain do the talking.....

YouTube - McCain: 100 years in Iraq "would be fine with me"

YouTube - John McCain Says More Wars

YouTube - McCain is an idiot!

Click to expand...

dude are u against our military bases in germany?

the ones in Japan? u against those?

we had bases there for almost 60 years my friend, you guys really need to use your melons, i think u guys are just surprised at a man who tells u the truth even though he knows the nit wits wont even understand it and the liberals will try to trick the nitwits in thinking this. i think your just amazed that this man has not lied to you for his own huge benifit. im sure you would like a nice answer from hilary that say "we are getting out asap"!! then when the polls say different she will say "we must stop the terroists in iraq" and the whole time she is plotting in the back room how to further fool you into complete submission so she has full control of where and when u take a shit

good read. thanks. i'm proud of his service, as described.

of course, those occured 30 years ago. who is he now? why is he advocating this empire building of america? the american take-over of the world? one ruler gets ALL the resources and can decide ALL the laws.

see, i would imagine that having experienced the true horrors of war would angle a man toward peace. if you and i can see that policy failures by american political criminals have brought us to this distablized level of unsafety, why would he advocate to continue the mistake of an interventionist foreign policy?

I see mccain as a 'status quo' guy. elect him and we get 4 or 8 years of the same outragous overspending on our military, the same corporate control of congress and the tanking of our U.S. dollar. he either incapable of understanding these errors of past administrations, or its intentional. more of the same...

wouldnt it have been easier just to post a wikipedia link? POW doesnt equate to good President. I disagree with his views, as do many others in this forum. I could really care less that his legs and arms were broken.

If your a Democrat you should be happy. John McCain is the best thing to happen to the Dem party in the last 10 years. If he gets the Republican ticket we will have a Democrat president. It doesn't matter if it's Hilary or Obama. McCain could not win a general election. He shot himslef in the foot with the 100 year war bullshit. In a country with close to 70% of the people opposed to a war you can't win it by saying you'll continue it for the next 100 years. He would have no shot, he would get killed...Unless, a major terrorist attack happens right before the election causing the American people, in a state of fear, to elect the candidate with the strongest defense plan? I could defenitely see that happening. Otherwise, I don't know what McCain's plan to win is.

sweet christ panda posted a whole book worth of info on here macain is a pimp when it comes to his record im sure he could still even pull ladies with his stories, he talks about his resume all the time! but it comes down to him being an alpha male not the one to be with all the non alphas out there i think he leans toward to im right your wrong attitude
i say fuck that weve had that already

iblazethatkush said:

If your a Democrat you should be happy. John McCain is the best thing to happen to the Dem party in the last 10 years. If he gets the Republican ticket we will have a Democrat president. It doesn't matter if it's Hilary or Obama. McCain could not win a general election. He shot himslef in the foot with the 100 year war bullshit. In a country with close to 70% of the people opposed to a war you can't win it by saying you'll continue it for the next 100 years. He would have no shot, he would get killed...Unless, a major terrorist attack happens right before the election causing the American people, in a state of fear, to elect the candidate with the strongest defense plan? I could defenitely see that happening. Otherwise, I don't know what McCain's plan to win is.

Click to expand...

OMG. I wouldn't put it past the illuminati.

But if what you say is true, the Illuminati will have arranged Hillary to be the Dem candidate. Then, if no matter who the people choose their covered.

iblazethatkush said:

If your a Democrat you should be happy. John McCain is the best thing to happen to the Dem party in the last 10 years. If he gets the Republican ticket we will have a Democrat president. It doesn't matter if it's Hilary or Obama. McCain could not win a general election. He shot himslef in the foot with the 100 year war bullshit. In a country with close to 70% of the people opposed to a war you can't win it by saying you'll continue it for the next 100 years. He would have no shot, he would get killed...Unless, a major terrorist attack happens right before the election causing the American people, in a state of fear, to elect the candidate with the strongest defense plan? I could defenitely see that happening. Otherwise, I don't know what McCain's plan to win is.

Click to expand...

sorry to disapoint but the polls show him winning in the general election against Hilldabeast or Barak Husain Obama

RealClearPolitics - Election 2008 - National Polls


God Bless you Lord Mcain Me Lord