-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- US Election McCain's Pain: Vets Doubt War Record Brainwashed by the commies? JOHN McCAIN, the former American prisoner of war challenging George W Bush for the Republican presidential nomination, has found his own record being questioned by the very people he claims to represent: fellow Vietnam veterans. Families and supporters of American soldiers classified as missing in action (MIAs), have launched a concerted campaign against the Arizona senator's attempt to become president. They claim that he has obstructed efforts to uncover the truth about the 2,054 men whose deaths in Vietnam or neighbouring countries have never been fully confirmed, and that he may even have collaborated with the enemy while a PoW. The bitterness of the complaints against him is at odds with his claim to speak for all war veterans. He is counting on "vets" to build support in the primary elections beginning in February, especially in South Carolina and California - two crucial states where ex-soldiers comprise 10 per cent of voters. However, opponents across the United States are using internet sites, e-mails and veterans' mailing lists in a drive to debunk Mr McCain's war record and mobilise opinion against him. Ted Sampley, who served twice in Vietnam and now edits a veterans' newsletter in North Carolina, said: "From the press he's been getting, if I didn't know what I know, I'd be supporting him, too. But those of us who know about him are afraid for him to be president. We'll do all we can to see that he's defeated." Mr McCain's critics claim that, while a prisoner of the North Vietnamese, he was more co-operative than he needed to be. They say that he voted to curtail senate hearings on missing servicemen, that he is brusque, impatient and rude to relatives of MIAs, and that he was too quick to back President Clinton's decision to normalise relations with Vietnam. The MIA issue remains acutely sensitive because of suspicions that some Americans may have been left behind - forgotten by the US government. Families of some missing men suspect that a series of administrations have been too fearful of the political and diplomatic fallout should live prisoners be discovered. Critics believe that prisoners who returned safely, such as Mr McCain, cannot face the possibility that others may have been left behind. A senate select committee inquiry, in which he was involved, concluded that, although there was no proof that any unknown prisoners survived, there was no evidence that all those who did not return had died. Some of Mr McCain's critics question the extent to which he bowed to the demands of his Communist captors during his six years of imprisonment, and cite the frequency with which he was put up as an interview subject for journalists on propaganda trips to Hanoi. Mr McCain, who suffered multiple broken bones when his aircraft was shot down, says he was hung up by ropes for four days until, in his desperation to receive medical help, he began offering military information which he judged was either of no consequence or was already publicly available. Mr Sampley admitted that captured Americans had suffered brutal treatment in Vietnam. But he pointed out that if Mr McCain was elected, it would be the first time that an American president had spent years as a prisoner in the hands of an enemy who "worked with a vengeance" to manipulate PoWs' brains. Another critic is Carol Hrdlicke, whose husband David, a pilot, was shot down in 1965. She was told by officials that he had died in captivity. The actual date of his death remained in dispute, she says, until the Air Force finally ruled that it had been 1968. Yet in 1994, she was told that her husband had been interviewed by a Russian journalist a full year after that date. She claimed that, as a senator, Mr McCain had tried to water down legislation designed to strengthen the safeguards against MIAs being declared dead prematurely. At the senate hearings, Mr McCain is said by MIA families to have reduced one of their number to tears. Dolores Alfond, from Bellevue in Washington state, who chairs the 5,000-strong National Alliance of Families, lost her brother, Major Victor Apodaca, who was declared missing in action in Vietnam in June 1967. She was on the receiving end of Mr McCain's tongue when he accused her of holding out false hopes and impeding discovery of the truth. He had said that he was "sick and tired" of criticisms over PoWs, she maintained. "Every time our organisation works on legislation regarding MIAs or veterans, McCain has always been there to stop us or throw obstacles in the way." A group of Mr McCain's fellow prisoners has been mobilised by his campaign to counter the criticisms. Orson Swindle, who spent months with him in captivity, said: "In one form or another, each and every one of us submitted. It's not the same as collaboration. You submit when you reach the end of the rope and can't stand the pain. You collaborate when you change your mind. "John McCain did not collaborate with the enemy. He was just an extraordinarily tough American in a terrible situation. We all fed them bullshit because it was a way out of the pain. He's an incredibly honest person of great intellect, extraordinary courageousness and an enormous sense of history." Still deeply embedded in the American psyche, the Vietnam War is featuring heavily in the presidential election campaign as the four leading candidates were all eligible to fight in it. Mr Bush, the Texas Governor, and Bill Bradley, who is contesting the Democratic nomination, both remained in the US, serving with the National Guard, while Vice-President Al Gore did serve in Vietnam - but worked as an army journalist. The London Telegraph, December 19, 1999 Russian Election War? What War? Vote for me! Al Gore didn't see the Juanita Broaddrick interview, and Russians don't see the war in Chechnya. A PARADOX attends the parliamentary election in Russia this Sunday. The issue that most concerns people outside Russia�the war in Chechnya�is barely a matter for discussion among either the candidates or the voters. What kind of country can hold a general election without discussing a civil war whose needless brutality horrifies most decent outsiders? The answer, of course, is a strange country, perhaps a uniquely strange country. Of all the European states (bar Yugoslavia) that sloughed off communism ten years ago, Russia has made the most uncertain progress towards adopting democracy and the standards of behaviour usually associated with it. All the country�s mainstream parties back the war, most of them uncritically. The prime minister, Vladimir Putin, who has a beady eye on the presidency due to fall vacant in the middle of next year, has won popularity for his vigorous quest for military victory. That the Chechens are unpopular is not surprising; they have all too often lived up to their reputation for cruelty and violence, now tinged with Islamic extremism. That Russians are concerned about terrorism and want to keep their country intact is also understandable. Yet in most democratic societies there would be protests about the indiscriminate and disproportionate response of the Russian army to the Chechen challenge; and, especially during an election campaign, there would be debate about how to end the war. Not, it seems, in Russia. Few Russians seem even to question the proposition that the only solution is the bloody reconquest of Chechnya and the subjugation of its people. Perhaps just as odd has been the virtual absence of serious debate about policies of any other kind. Reform of Russia�s dreadful economy�smaller now than that of the Netherlands�has, for instance, barely been mentioned. The Communist Party on the left and assorted nationalists on the Slavophile right would plainly like to recreate some kind of Russian empire, though it is unclear how they would do it. Cynicism abounds, especially about the corrupt new order that has replaced the coercively deadening old one. It is matched by dismay at the degradation into which Russia has sunk, even though most Russians�Communists included�know that a return to a Soviet-style past is unthinkable. The electoral contest has, for the most part, been a matter of dirty money, wild promises, defamation of character and the promotion, with varying degrees of slickness and sophistication, of personalities devoid of policies. No wonder then that the new Duma, the lower house of parliament, will probably be much like the fairly awful old one. Though many of its deputies, led by the Communists, have been hostile to President Boris Yeltsin, they have never quite collected enough votes to impeach and oust him�or the guts to risk losing their seats in the process. The Communists look set, once again, to gain the largest block of seats, perhaps a fifth of the total. As before, out-and-out reformers and liberals will do badly. As before, the pattern of new alignments will not emerge until independents start to show their colours; though half the seats are filled by parties competing on national lists, the other half, in first-past-the-post constituencies, will contain many candidates, especially from the remoter regions, whose allegiances will be uncertain. In any event, since the Duma�s powers are weak compared with the president�s, the election is unlikely to produce a sudden dramatic change in the way Russia is run. Yet the Duma matters. It is supposed to make, scrutinise and revise laws, in tandem with the president. It is supposed to draw up a budget. It can sack prime ministers and reject new ones proposed by the president. It can refuse to sign treaties. It can stir up xenophobia and anti-western feeling, and generally be a thorough nuisance. But the main point of interest in Sunday�s voting is what it will indicate about the summer�s presidential election�and about the sort of Russia that the world is likely to have to deal with in the next few years. The contest to come Admittedly, any Communist success on Sunday will not be a guide to next summer�s race: the Communists� leader, Gennady Zyuganov, looks incapable of extending his reach beyond a large minority of resentful nostalgists. Rather, the presidential candidates whose popularity will be tested in Sunday�s vote are Mr Putin and Yevgeny Primakov, a former prime minister (and, like the incumbent, also a former KGB man). Mr Putin is standing above the Duma fray, though he has blessed a small party called Unity; he is also Mr Yeltsin�s anointed heir. Mr Primakov�s Fatherland-All Russia party, backed by Moscow�s powerful mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, has no big policy differences with Mr Yeltsin or Mr Putin. But a Putin presidency would be likely, all the same, to differ from a Primakov one. As prime minister, Mr Putin has concentrated entirely, and with chilling ruthlessness, on Chechnya. He has ties with some leading economic reformers, and many businessmen think he might not be bad, even if, as liberals fear, he sought to be a Russian Pinochet. Members of the corrupt coterie around Mr Yeltsin hope Mr Putin would protect them if he won. His fortunes, however, hinge entirely on the outcome of the war�his war�in Chechnya. Mr Primakov is in poor health. He is tough and canny, and unlikely to pursue reform with any zeal. But he might, as he did when he was prime minister, try to bring down some of the more outrageous business �oligarchs� who have so corrupted Russian politics. Both men might co-operate better with the Duma than Mr Yeltsin has done. Both would bring a new sense of authority to the Kremlin after years of erratic behaviour alternating with drift. But both suffer from that grievous Russian fault�of seeing politics, at home and abroad, as a zero-sum game in which any gain for one side inevitably involves a loss, or even a humiliation, for the other. Both might well make mischief in the world, threaten neighbours and oppress regions seeking greater autonomy. In sum, neither would be easy for the West. What the current campaign has most painfully brought out is Russia�s moral and political vacuum. For sure, a multi-party election, however crass, is infinitely better than the tyranny that went before. But Russia is still far from being a normal country. Its tragedy, after centuries of autocracy and 74 years of mass-murder and ideological lunacy, is that too few of its people realise that democracy and market economics alike can thrive only if civic values�honesty, equality before the law, a modicum of compassion�are nurtured at the same time. Neither the members of the Duma, old or new, nor Mr Putin or Mr Primakov, let alone Mr Yeltsin, understand that. Until they do, Russia will remain horrible�especially to its own people, the Chechens foremost among them. The Economist, December 17-23, 1999 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Recent Articles by J. Orlin Grabbe DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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