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Jul 2006
McCain's Character -- A Disaster Waiting To Happen
by John LeBoutillie
Ronald Kessler's excellent piece in Newsmax on Senator John McCain's erratic and explosive temper is 100% dead on target. As someone who has known McCain for 32 years, I can unequivocally state that he should be no where near the Oval Office.
His behavior through the years tells us all we need to know: he is a spoiled brat-turned adult who demeans people who dare to disagree with him; he has an explosive temper that can erupt on a nanosecond's notice; he is a total liar who will tell you something one day and then totally deny it the next (more on that below); he is a political chameleon who is enabled by the so-called Main Stream Media; he is also a megalomaniac whose former POW status has allowed him to get away with things -- i.e. the Keating Five Scandal -- that others would have gone to jail for.
In sum, McCain is a disaster waiting-to-happen.
Now, a story: in 1990-1991 I had the great privilege to meet and ultimately befriend retired Air Force Colonel Ted Guy. Ted had been a POW in Vietnam for over six years -- after being shot down and captured in Laos and driven on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to Hanoi. Ted became famous as the war ended as he tried to bring changes against several of his fellow US POWs who he thought had cooperated with the North Vietnamese while in captivity; after coming home in 1973 his superiors decided not to press charges. But Ted was forever branded a "real hard ass" because of this incident.
For a while Ted was the Senior Ranking Officer (SRO) in -- I believe -- The Plantation (a POW camp on the outskirts of Hanoi) in which John McCain was also being held.
The SRO kept the chain of military order among the POWs; they took orders from him and kept discipline that way.
When I got to know Ted Guy, the US Senate Select Committee on POWs was being organized; McCain was named a member. Ted Guy's thoughts -- then -- about McCain? "John was a good troop in camp."
Ted Guy -- since repatriation in 1973 -- had discounted any chance that living US POWs were left behind in Vietnam after the January 27, 1973 Paris Peace Agreements. In fact, by his own admission, Ted often became gruff with MIA family members who asked him if their loved one might have been left behind in captivity. "I told them there was no chance and they needed to get a life."
This was the same message many of the former POWs were delivering to relatives of the thousands of men who did not come home in Operation Homecoming: "Forget it... we are the only living men... give it up and move on with your lives." Of course, that was easy for them to say: they had come home!!!
The US Government never officially briefed the returning POWs about the egregious violations of the Paris Peace Accords -- by both Hanoi and Washington DC. Washington refused to pay the $4.25 billion President Nixon secretly promised in a February 1, 1973 letter to Premier Pham Van Dong -- and kept hidden from the Congress for three years; Hanoi failed to release the other group of 600 US POWs they were holding as an insurance policy against these funds.
If the truth had been told to our returning heros, they would probably have led the charge for the return of their comrades; but they were not told. Instead they were sent out to America's heartland as the war heros we so desperately needed -- McCain and Ted Guy included.
Except that Ted Guy was intellectually honest enough to read all the new revelations that began surfacing in the 1980's; by 1991 he had seen enough. "I was lied to," he told me. "I am now certain we knowingly left men behind in captivity." Ted also got a fellow former POW, Terry Uyeyama, to join our little 'group' as we went around DC trying to get the US Government to reverse policy and negotiate for the living men still being held in Vietnam and Laos.
Then McCain entered the picture.
As the Senate Committee heated up -- and more and more new information surfaced showing that indeed we did leave men behind held against their will in Vietnam and Laos -- McCain began a long and vicious campaign to discredit and shoot down any new information or anyone advocating that the truth about our POWs be made public. Thus emerged for many to see the mean and ugly side of John McCain.
Ted Guy, his old Senior Ranking Officer and friend and admirer, soon changed his mind about McCain.
A series of odd phone calls to Ted in Missouri from McCain made him question the truthfulness and sanity of McCain. "John would call me one day and say something... and then he'd call a few days later and I'd ask him about what he'd said on the first call and John would completely deny ever saying it!"
So Ted Guy began recording all his phone calls from McCain. "I don't trust him anymore," said Colonel Guy. "I think he is a total liar."
From these taped calls, Ted soon discovered a frequent pattern: McCain often denied things he has just said only a few days earlier!
How to explain this? A liar or a total nut? Or both?
Sadly, Ted Guy died of leukemia 7 years ago. A healthy Ted Guy today could have and would have stood up and told the truth about John McCain -- and had the former-POW status to take McCain on.
McCain these days goes unchecked -- either about his truthfulness or his sanity. Ron Kessler has opened the topic of McCain's explosive and dangerous temper to further public scrutiny. In Ron's story are traces of the lies and denials and admissions -- all at the same time!
In sum, John McCain is not the man for the presidency. He is a fraud.
Yes, he would beat Hillary one on one. And we can't have her either.
But before everyone rushes to sign up for McCain's campaign, let's take a break and learn more about McCain the man and his character.
Once you get to 'know' this man, you will agree: he must be defeated by a real Reagan conservative for the GOP nomination.
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John LeBoutillier is a former U.S. Congressman and a nationally recognized political commentator. He has been a frequent guest on many national talk show programs and is author of the book Harvard Hates America. He is a regular columnist for Ether Zone.
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