Sacrifice This

I’m not a McCain worshipper. He’s way too right wing for me and I wouldn’t vote for him (unless it was between him and any other Republican.) But like many people, I can’t help liking the guy and it’s mostly because he seems to be completely unafraid of the GOP bullyboys. But then, he’s been tortured at the hands of tough guys that make the likes of Lil’ Tommy “isn’t that French?” DeLay look like a 6 week old kitten by comparison.

So, it was especially stomach churning to see “Doughboy” Denny Hastert and his posse of Beavis, Butthead, Dilbert and Elmer Fudd laughing and snorting as he lectured McCain about the sacrifices of the men and women at Walter Reed.

As other House GOP members stood behind him laughing, Hastert, R-Illinois, then expressed doubt that McCain was indeed a Republican.

The exchange started when a reporter asked: “Can I combine a two issues, Iraq and taxes? I heard a speech from John McCain the other day…”

Hastert: “Who?”

Reporter: “John McCain.”

Hastert: “Where’s he from?”

Reporter: “He’s a Republican from Arizona.”

Hastert: “A Republican?”

Amid nervous laughter, the reporter continued with his question: “Anyway, his observation was never before when we’ve been at war have we been worrying about cutting taxes and his question was, ‘Where’s the sacrifice?’ ”

Hastert: “If you want to see the sacrifice, John McCain ought to visit our young men and women at Walter Reed and Bethesda. There’s the sacrifice in this country. We’re trying to make sure they have the ability to fight this war, that they have the wherewithal to be able to do it. And, at the same time, we have to react to keep this country strong.”

Hastert, I believe, once sacrificed the two for one special at IHOP in favor of the RazzleDazzle Waffle Slam so he knows what he’s talking about.

During Vietnam though, like his owner Dick Cheney, Denny had other priorities. After getting his Masters in Gym in 1967, it was not for the Denster to join either the service or the unwashed war protestors. Denny, a fervent supporter of the war, believed that the best way for him to serve was in the vital national security role of drivers ed teacher. The nation honors his sacrifice.

Meanwhile, glory hog McCain, was sharing a few frat boy pranks with the North Vietnamese:

That is your final answer?” one of his interrogators, nicknamed the “Cat,” asked McCain on July 3, 1968 — not coincidentally the very day McCain’s father, John Sidney “Jack” McCain Jr., was named commander of U.S. naval forces in the Pacific.

“That is my final answer,” McCain said.

“They taught you too well,” said an irate Cat. “They taught you too well.”

Added another interrogator, the “Rabbit”: “Now, McCain, it will be very bad for you.”

And it was. One of his captors, the one they called “Slopehead,” told McCain, “You’re a black criminal. You must confess your crimes.”

McCain demurred. “Fuck you,” he said.

“Why do you treat your guards so disrespectfully?” Slopehead asked. “Because they treat me like an animal,” McCain replied.

“When I said that,” McCain wrote in U.S. News, “the guards, who were all in the room — about 10 of them — really laid into me. They bounced me from pillar to post, kicking and laughing and scratching. After a few hours of that, ropes were put on me and I sat that night bound with ropes … For the next four days, I was beaten every two or three hours by different guards. My left arm was broken again and my ribs were cracked.”

On the third night, as McCain would later write in “Faith of My Fathers,” he was beaten so badly he almost committed suicide before “confessing” his war crimes:

I lay in my own blood and waste, so tired and hurt that I could not move. The Prick [another captor] came in with two other guards, lifted me to my feet, and gave me the worst beating I had yet experienced … Despairing of any relief from pain and further torture, and fearing the close reproach of my moment of dishonor, I tried to take my life. I doubt I really intended to kill myself. But I couldn’t fight anymore, and I remember deciding that the last thing I could do to make them believe I was still resisting, that I wouldn’t break, was to attempt suicide.

McCain took off his shirt. He turned over the waste bucket and stepped on it. He looped his shirt through a shutter. But before he could act, the Prick ran in and beat him up.

One day later, McCain signed a confession admitting to war crimes. He would remain a POW for almost five more years, until March 15, 1973. His injuries are still with him; he cannot raise his arms above his shoulders; he still has a slight limp.

If visiting Walter Reed doesn’t sufficiently remind him of sacrifice maybe he could just try to comb his hair.

I make no excuses for McCain’s racist nicknames, but I do cut him some slack for the hatred. It’s probably what kept him alive. However, it must also be noted that unlike his immature GOP brethren, he was man enough to put the past behind him and he and John Kerry went on to engineer the rapprochement with Vietnam.

Meanwhile, Denny and the boys, still angry and nursing their wounds from 4th grade dodge ball, are today using young Americans as board pieces in their little game of “I am too a real man!” and it’s destroying this country.