{"id":581614,"date":"2010-05-27T13:25:07","date_gmt":"2010-05-27T17:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonplanet.com\/?p=44264"},"modified":"2010-05-27T13:25:07","modified_gmt":"2010-05-27T17:25:07","slug":"hundreds-of-pow%e2%80%99s-left-to-die-in-vietnam-abandoned-by-their-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/581614","title":{"rendered":"Hundreds Of POW\u2019s Left To Die In Vietnam, Abandoned By Their Government"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Prison Planet.com \u00bb Prison Planet<\/p>\n

Ron Unz
\nThe American Conservative<\/a>
\nThursday, May 27, 2010<\/p>\n

In the closing days of the 2008 presidential campaign, I clicked an ambiguous link on an obscure website and stumbled into a parallel universe.<\/p>\n

During the previous two years of that long election cycle, the media narrative surrounding Sen. John McCain had been one of unblemished heroism and selfless devotion to his fellow servicemen. Thousands of stories on television and in print had told of his brutal torture at the hands of his North Vietnamese captors, his steely refusal to crack, and his later political career aimed at serving the needs of fellow Vietnam veterans. This storyline had first reached the national stage during his 2000 campaign, then returned with even greater force as he successfully sought the 2008 Republican nomination. Seemingly accepted by all, this history became a centerpiece of his campaign. McCain\u2019s supporters touted his heroism as proof that he possessed the character to be entrusted with America\u2019s highest office, while his detractors merely sought to change the subject.<\/p>\n

Once I clicked that link, I encountered a very different John McCain.<\/p>\n

I read copious, detailed evidence that hundreds of American POWs had been condemned to death at enemy hands by top American leaders, apparently because their safe return home would have constituted a major political embarrassment. I found documentation that the cover-up of this betrayal had gone on for decades, eventually drawing in a certain Arizona senator. According to this remarkable reconstruction of events, the average teenage moviegoer of the 1980s watching mindless action films such as \u201cRambo,\u201d \u201cMissing in Action,\u201d and \u201cUncommon Valor\u201d was seeing reality portrayed on screen, while the policy expert reading sober articles in the pages of The New Republic <\/em>and The Atlantic<\/em> was absorbing lies and propaganda. Since I had been believing those very articles, this was a stunning revelation.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"Hundreds<\/a><\/p>\n

But was this alternate description of reality correct? Could this one article be true and all the countless contrary pieces I had read in America\u2019s most prestigious publications be false, merely the presentation of official propaganda endlessly repeated? I cannot say. I am not an expert on the history of the Vietnam War and its aftermath.<\/p>\n

Yet consider the source. The author of that remarkable 8,000-word expos\u00e9\u2014\u201cMcCain and the POW Cover-Up<\/a>,\u201d published on The Nation Institute\u2019s website\u2014was Sydney Schanberg, one of America\u2019s foremost Vietnam War journalists. His reporting won him a Pulitzer Prize, and his subsequent book on Cambodia was made into \u201cThe Killing Fields,\u201d an Oscar-winning movie. Schanberg later served as one of the highest-ranking editors at the New York Times<\/em>, with a third of the reporters at our national newspaper of record working under him. A case can be made that no living American journalist can write with greater credibility on Vietnam War matters. And he had labored for years researching and exhaustively documenting the story of American POWs abandoned in Indochina\u2014a story that if true might easily represent the single greatest act of national dishonor ever committed by our political leaders.<\/p>\n

He presented a mass of evidence with names, dates, and documentary detail. Many of the individuals mentioned are still alive and could be interviewed or called to testify. Sealed government records could be ordered unsealed. If America wishes to determine the truth, it can do so.<\/p>\n

Yet what I found most remarkable about Schanberg\u2019s essay were not its explosive historical claims but the absolute silence with which they were received in the mainstream media. In 2008, John McCain\u2019s heroic war record and personal patriotism were central to his quest for supreme power\u2014a goal he came very close to achieving. But when one of America\u2019s most eminent journalists published an exhaustive report that the candidate had instead served as one of the leading figures in a monumental act of national treachery, our media took no notice. McCain\u2019s public critics and the operatives of his Democratic opponent might eagerly seize upon every rumor that the senator had had a private lunch with a disreputable corporate lobbyist, but they ignored documented claims that he had covered up the killing of hundreds of American POWs. These allegations were serious enough and sufficiently documented to warrant national attention\u2014yet they received none.<\/p>\n

\n

Related Posts:<\/h3>\n