John McCain an honourable & dutiful American

MM Online - Pentagon confirms push to hide USS John McCain from Trump:

The US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain is seen after a collision, in Singapore waters August 21, 2017

Reuters pic

SEOUL, June 3 ― The acting Pentagon chief confirmed yesterday that the White House had requested the hiding of a warship bearing the name of late Senator John McCain during a visit by Donald Trump to Japan.

In Washington, White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said the request probably was made by somebody on the president’s advance team but no one would be fired for it.

US media reported that efforts were made to obscure the USS John S. McCain’s name during Trump’s visit to an American military facility last week, accusations denied by acting Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan and the president.

But Shanahan said yesterday that the president’s staff had contacted the Japan-based 7th Fleet of the US Navy and given “the directive that the USS John S McCain should be hidden from view”.

“That directive was not carried out,” Shanahan told media while flying to Seoul for the third leg of his week-long tour of Asia.

Shanahan said he commissioned an investigation led by the Pentagon chief of staff upon learning of the incident. “There is no room for politicising the military,” he added. “I’ll deal with this in an appropriate manner.” 

Shanahan’s spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Joe Buccino, said the Pentagon had already lodged a protest at a White House meeting on Friday. [...] 

Trump had a combative political relationship with McCain, who died last August and was taken prisoner and tortured during the Vietnam war.

According to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the story, Shanahan was aware of concern about the ship’s name and “approved measures to ensure it didn’t interfere with the president’s visit.”

Those measures included hanging a tarpaulin over the ship’s name, the Journal said. The tarpaulin was removed before Trump arrived, but a barge was moved closer to the ship, blocking the view of its name.

Crew serving aboard the 154-metre vessel, whose uniforms bear the ship’s name, were prevented from attending a speech Trump delivered from a neighbouring ship, media reports said. [...]

One was a war hero in the Vietnam War

One was a 5-times draft-dodger from the Vietnam War, a Chickenhawk

a Chickenhawk describe a person who strongly supports war or other military action (i.e., a war hawk), yet who actively avoids or avoided military service when of age

The term indicates that the person in question is hypocritical for personally dodging a draft or otherwise shirking their duty to their country during a time of armed conflict while advocating that others do so.

Generally, the implication is that Chickenhawks lack the moral character to participate in war themselves, preferring to ask others to support, fight and perhaps die in an armed conflict

Trump insisted the same day that he would not have ordered hiding the vessel from view during his visit, and said he “couldn’t care less” whether a Navy destroyer bore the name of his late rival. ― AFP

But of course no one believes that compulsive liar and pussy-grabbing meanie, especially not a 5-times draft-dodger from a war that made John McCain a Vietnam war hero and honourable officer - when allowed to leave by North Vietnam from the POW camp (Hanoi Hilton), McCain declined and remained in POW camp for 5 more horrible years in order to allow another US officer, who was in the prison earlier, leave first - such was the honour of a noble and dutiful military officer.

McCain bottom right 

Effing Trump then had the bloody brazen shameless thick-skinned face, to describe John McCain's suffering as a POW in the 'Hanoi Hilton' as:

"He is a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured, OK? I hate to tell you. He is a war hero because he was captured." 

This disgusting cowardly Chickenhawk now has the shameless effrontery to demand the USN ship named after John McCain, a war hero, be removed from his sight when the disgusting pussy-grabber is in Japan.

John McCain was one of America's modern war-hero. Yet I recall another ultra right academician W Scott Thompson in November 2008 railing against McCain, strangely even though McCain was a GOP (Republican Party) senator. In the USA, ultra right attacks would usually be launched against Democratic Party people or left wingers. Thus I had then suspected and admired John McCain as far too decent for ultra right wingers to like. To me t'was to McCain's decency and humanitarian credit.

in John McCain, a war hero, we found in him compassion and humanitarianism. Even his Vietnamese enemies after the war respected and liked him

but it would be in Chickenhawks like the Republican Party very aggressive belligerent bellicose high officials, eg. Donald Trump, George Bush Jnr, Dick Cheney (former VP to Bush, chief amongst the Chickenhawks), John Bolton (currently National Security Advisor of the USA), John Ashcroft (Former Att'y Gen. ), Karl Rove (known as the Prince of Darkness for his Machiavellian tactics, he advised President George Bush), Newt Gingrich (Former Speaker) who became Vietnam War draft-dodgers

Anyway, in 2008, I wrote a letter to Malaysiakini countering (Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy) Professor Emeritus W Scott Thompson attack on John McCain in his article 'Landslide' published by Malaysiakini. I was appalled by that academician's feral vicious attacks on John McCain. 11 years ago, in my letter, I penned:

While I share Professor Thompson's preference for Barack Obama as the future US President, his under-the-belt criticism of McCain has been most deplorable and smacked of the grubby style of the Swift Boats Veterans for Truth.

John Kerry
Democratic Party presidential candidate against George Bush in 2004

also a Vietnam War hero with a silver star to his merits, he was badmouthed by the GOP hecklers, the so-called Swift Vets and POWs for Truth

From Wikipedia: Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, formerly known as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT), was a political group of United States Swift boat veterans and former POWs of the Vietnam War, formed during the 2004 presidential election campaign for the purpose of opposing John Kerry's candidacy for the presidency.

The campaign inspired the widely used political pejorative "swiftboating", to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. The group disbanded and ceased operations on May 31, 2008.

Several major newspapers were also skeptical of the SBVT allegations. For example, a New York Times news article stated, "on close examination, the accounts of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth prove to be riddled with inconsistencies." Regarding the medal dispute, a Los Angeles Times editorial stated, "Not limited by the conventions of our colleagues in the newsroom, we can say it outright: These charges against John Kerry are false." The editorial argued this position on the basis that "Kerry is backed by almost all those who witnessed the events in question, as well as by documentation."

On August 22, 2004 The Washington Post reported: "An investigation by The Washington Post into what happened that day suggests that both sides have withheld information from the public record and provided an incomplete, and sometimes inaccurate, picture of what took place. But although Kerry's accusers have succeeded in raising doubts about his war record, they have failed to come up with sufficient evidence to prove him a liar."

The ABC television show Nightline traveled to Vietnam and interviewed Vietnamese who were involved in the battle for which Kerry was awarded the Silver Star. These witnesses disputed O'Neill's charge that there "was little or no fire" that day; they said that the fighting was fierce.

SBVT supporters question whether these witnesses are reliable because they spoke "in the presence of a Communist official", but their account of enemy fire is substantially the same as that previously given by another former Viet Cong to an AP reporter and by the American witnesses, including the only SBVT member who was actually present that day, Larry Clayton Lee.

ABC News's The Note opined, "the Swift Boat ad and their primary charges about Kerry's medals are personal, negative, extremely suspect, or false."

Sadly for the USA, Senator John Kerry, a Vietnam War hero, lost to George Bush Jnr, a Chickenhawk, because of such dishonest, personal, and unfair 'swiftboating'.

Continuing with my letter: 

Thompson should be ashamed of himself for writing sneeringly of McCain as "a 'national hero' who supposedly had earned the presidency for five years squatting in a Vietnamese jail (heroism defined as endurance rather than courageous choice)."

If McCain was a war hero, it would not be because he was a POW, though he demonstrated his discipline and inner strength as a naval officer during his wartime incarceration. It would have to be his unstinting service to his country as a naval pilot who was prepared to conduct air operations 23 times (before being shot down) over North Vietnam, at that time one of the most heavily defended airspace in the world.

McCain was and is unlike President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, two of the most belligerent American leaders ever seen, but who both successfully avoided the Vietnam War.

Prof. Scott was a former member of both Ford and Reagan Administrations. He also was an Adjunct Professor of International Politics at Georgetown University

KT's sidenote (from Wikipedia): 

When Trump was in college from 1964 to 1968, he obtained four student draft deferments. In 1966, he was deemed fit for military service based upon a medical examination and in July 1968, a local draft board briefly classified him as eligible to serve.

In October 1968, he was given a medical deferment that he later attributed to spurs in the heels of both feet, which resulted in a 1-Y classification: "Unqualified for duty except in the case of a national emergency." In the December 1969 draft lottery, Trump's birthday, June 14, received a high number that would have given him a low probability to be called to military service even without the 1-Y.

In 1972, he was reclassified as 4-F, which permanently disqualified him from service.

In 1973 and 1976, The New York Times reported that Trump had graduated first in his class at Wharton. However, a 1984 Times profile of Trump noted that he had never made the honor roll. 

In 1988, New York magazine reported Trump conceding, "Okay, maybe not 'first,' as myth has it, but he had 'the highest grades possible.'"

What a shameless loathsome revolting fibber. Okay, back to my 2008 letter to Malaysiakini:

We also need to note also that McCain refused a North Vietnamese offer of early release in 1968, because it would mean him leaving before other prisoners who had been held longer. Such had been his sense of honour, sense of fairness and duty to his comrades that he was prepared to remain in the horrible POW camp for another 5 years before he was released in 1973 after the Paris Peace Accords.

But regardless of whether one wishes to remember McCain's duty to his country in war or his courageous endurance in the infamous 'Hanoi Hilton', Professor Thompson should hang his head in shame for employing the politically-motivated dismissive word 'supposedly', and for attempting to diminish McCain's war service by a pathetic hair-splitting re-definition of the 'heroism' attributed to the Republican presidential candidate.

Then, being the academic snob he must be, he contrasted McCain's Annapolis achievements (the US naval academy) against Obama's Harvard background. To borrow a leaf out of Thompson's book, that's like comparing the finest tempered steel against a fluffy quill.

But to be fair to Obama in the steel versus quill model, can there be a comparison between two vastly different items, each of relevant use in specific scenarios. Yes, it's like saying apples are superior to oranges!

One must remember that Republican John McCain defended Democrat John Kerry during the Swift Boats Veterans for Truth [SBVT] smear campaign through advertisements against the Democrat presidential candidate. McCain stated: "I condemn the [SBVT] ad. It is dishonest and dishonorable. I think it is very, very wrong."

Recently, McCain defended his presidential candidate rival Obama when a white Republican supporter alluded to the alleged Obama's questionable foreign allegiance. McCain chopped that bigoted suggestion down and spoke of Obama as a decent American citizen.

Professor Thompson should take note that while McCain might not have run the Harvard Law Review, he has time and time again demonstrated the finest example of his Annapolis training, that of honour (decency) and duty!

Oh, what P.U.K-Ing bastards have been there in the American world. I normally dislike American politicians (because of the USA's foreign policies) but John McCain would be one of the rare exceptions.

I salute him (and memories of this great American hero).