Every day it seems that damning truths and evidence come out about Senator McCain, and yet the media doesn't focus on them. What we get are stories of heroism and valor. Dedication to "Country First". You know why? Because John McCain, the original Maverick, is a WAR HERO. Fellow Kossacks, don't let that fact, that Senator McCain is a WAR HERO, be lost on you. In fact, John McCain WAR HERO is such an inspiration, I've drafted an open letter to him. Follow me after the jump...

    I'm not trying to freak out, but see HuffP, Jim Webb: "Under No Circumstances" Will I Consider V.P. Role.
    This is extremely serious.

    If you don't think Barack can lose in November, he very much can. Sebelius is fine (see my old "Sebelius/Webb '08" diaries), but she has no military experience. I don't think Richardson does either, among his other problems. Sam Nunn, too old school. Etc.
    And if you think Joe/Jane Voter doesn't really care about the "war hero" thing, re both McCain and Webb, I'm not sure you understand American politics.

    Jim Webb is essentially what John McCain should have become if McCain had made the right moral and political decisions. And Webb playing "Achilles sulking in the tent" now is not helping this country at all, I have to say. It's time for Webb to hear from the netroots who helped him so much.

    (Action info below)

Why is Obama going above and beyond to enforce the myth that McCain is a larger-than-life hero and that no criticism should go his way ever because of his war record?

How is McCain any different from any single person who fought in any war?

How is McCain different from the 4 thousand plus who have died in Iraq, albeit unnecessarily because of people like McCain who want to keep this war going and have more of our young men and women die in a war that should have never been authorized, and that is creating waves of Jihadists?

All those who dies in Iraq for instance sacrificed their life for their country (they don't get to chose where to fight) and that is the most one can sacrifice.

Yet we'd rather insist that McCain is a war hero, even when he opposes well-deserved benefits for those war veterans and hear more about McCain instead.  It's all about McCain!

McCain, although he suffered horribly during his POW years, he is still alive and making a political career out of false notions  that he is McJesus somehow because he was shot down in Vietnam.

i'm an amateur with something bothering me....

A call to action for McCain to sign SF-180 and release his full military records so he can be properly vetted. The MSM must stop giving McCain their blessing. Please stay with me.

Are they the same person?  Very much so.   The New York Review of Books Volume 55, Number 11 · June 26, 2008 has a review of A Time to Fight: Reclaiming a Fair and Just America entitled "The Jim Webb Story", by Elizabeth Drew.  She starts bt saying:

Webb is a serious writer, not a politician who writes books on the side. His first book, Fields of Fire, published in 1978, when Webb was thirty-two, is a sweeping, unflinching novel about Vietnam featuring two of life's losers who signed up for lack of anything else to do. It conveys with stark vividness, and also a touch of farce, the stench, the filth, the fear, and the bewildering unexpectedness of fighting an elusive enemy in a jungle. Fields of Fire has often been called the best book about Vietnam and likened to the war writing of Norman Mailer and Stephen Crane.

 Look beneath the break for more.

Ever since McCain started to run for president, he looked to me much less of the "straight talk maverick" that media portrays him to be, and much more of an opportunist and a guy with serious character flaws.

As we have witnessed, especially during this campaign, there isn't anything he won't say or flip-flop on to be elected the next president, even opposing his own Bill in Congress.

How many John McCains are out there anyhow? Does anyone even keep track nowadays?

This is going to be a nasty mean diary. But I am sick and tired of McCain brushing off every legitimate criticism by invoking the fact that he was a POW. Being a POW does not excuse you for having a crappy health policy. Being a POW does not make you a war hero -- for that you have to kill the enemy in a useful way to actually win the war. Kerry was more of a war hero with his Rambo-esque charge the enemy approach. And being a POW does not make you an expert on military or foreign policy.

Check out Wikipeida entry on the early life and military career of John McCain

1. was fifth from the bottom in class rank, 894th out of 899.

2. a sub-par flier, with limited patience for studying aviation manuals.

3. Crashed his plane THREE times, before shot down and taken prisoner.

4. Possible/alleged role in Forrestal fire?

I've noticed, as I'm sure most people have, that whenever Barack Obama criticizes John McCain, he starts out by saying he respects him and that he's a war hero. Typically something like: "I respect Senator McCain and his heroic service to our country, but we can't afford 4 more years of failed Bush economic policies."

Now, initially, I read this as trying to appear as respectful as possibly to McCain, but now I have a different reading. Obama is trying to marginalize McCain as nothing more than a war hero. Let me explain...

    John McCain was a Naval Aviator.  On his twenty-third bombing mission over North Vietnam later in 1967, he was shot down, badly injured, and captured as a prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese. He spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war, including periods of torture, before he was released in accordance with the Paris Peace Accords in 1973.

   He has been called a war hero because of these experiences.  It has shielded him from attack during his political career, and is a major contributor to his selection as the Republican presidential nominee this year.

My question is, how does being captured and held prisoner make you a hero?