Abusing The Excuse

When it comes to narratives in this presidential campaign that I’m definitely sick of by now, the supposedly irreparable conflict between the disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters and those favoring Barack Obama (with the Clintons doing all that they possibly can to quash this nonsense as nearly as I can see) tops the list.

However, I would put John W. McBush’s POW experience as a close second.

And it shouldn’t be that way, I know. And we should always express gratitude and admiration for what he endured in our country’s service.

However, McBush has utterly tarnished that himself, particularly in this campaign, and he only has himself to blame.

And the latest example of the entire “noun-verb-P.O.W.” syndrome, as Atrios and others have put it, came last night on (appropriately enough for the “non-elitist” Arizona senator) “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” as noted here…

After their opening segment together on the stage, Leno came back from a commercial break to ask McCain, “For $1 million, how many houses do you have?”

McCain answered by first citing his time as a POW in Vietnam.

“Could I just mention to you, Jay, that, at a moment of seriousness,” McCain began, “I spent five-and-a-half years in a prison cell. I didn't have a house. I didn't have a kitchen table. I didn't have a table. I didn't have a chair. And I didn't spend those five-and-a-half years because, not because I wanted to get a house when I got out.

Give it a rest, Senator McBush (as if that has anything to do with why you can’t remember such a basic fact).

You and your gaggle of bottom-feeders would have had no trouble milking such a gaffe by a Democrat for all it was worth; indeed, your cohorts merrily persecuted John Kerry for much less four years ago (and to think, you told him not to play up his military experience).

But since you brought it up, Senator McBush, I think we should take a look at your P.O.W. experience after all.

This Washington Post story from May tells us…

Since his repatriation in 1973, (McBush) has occasionally been examined at the Robert E. Mitchell Center for Prisoner of War Studies, run by the Navy in Pensacola, Fla. However, (campaign spokesperson Jill) Hazelbaker said this week that the senator "has not for many years participated in any POW follow-up."

The center saw 470 of 666 POWs who served in Vietnam and has also seen prisoners from World War II, Korea, the Iranian hostage crisis, the Persian Gulf War and the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Very little information about them has been published. For example, it is not known how their longevity compares with that of other veterans or non-veterans.

A 1996 paper, one of the few studies to appear in a scientific journal, reported that naval aviators imprisoned in Vietnam had eight times as much nerve and muscle damage as non-imprisoned fliers, probably a result of shackling and torture. They had slightly more joint and back disorders, as well.

Over a 14-year period, 4 percent of the aviator POWs, all of them officers, experienced PTSD. Research on World War II prisoners found that officers as a group had far less psychological trauma than enlisted men.

More recently, the Pensacola center helped identify something called "late-onset stress symptomatology" or LOSS, which came to light after 562 combat veterans -- about 300 of them POWs -- answered a long questionnaire. The syndrome involves the return of troubling memories late in life, along with emotional anguish and guilt, often triggered by retirement and friends' deaths.

LOSS shares with PTSD a re-experiencing of traumatic events and some of the physical "hyperarousal" that accompanies it. But it does not include "emotional numbing" and the avoidance of activities that trigger the intrusive thoughts -- two key features of PTSD.

"As the veterans reached their later years, they began to experience combat-related thoughts and feelings as they faced the changes and challenges of aging," said Lynda A. King, a researcher at Boston University and the local Veterans Affairs hospital, who has studied LOSS. "We saw it as something much broader than PTSD."

So basically, McBush, while less likely to experience PTSD in the White House (arguably), could still experience LOSS without anything to trigger such an experience (though any claim that McBush did not experience PTSD will be disputed in a minute).

(And by the way, all of this is starting to make this whole freeper movement to get McBush to sign onto a “one-and-done” pledge a logical move, given what could happen to him at the onset of an attack.)

And as Matt Stoller reminds us here…

All we know is that (McBush) released 1500 pages of medical records for his 2000 campaign and this cycle he allowed selected journalists to look at certain documents for three hours.

And no photocopies were made of McBush’s records during that review, it should also be noted (can’t tell you if that would have violated HIPAA regs, though).

Oh, and another thing – do you know that McBush tried to kill himself?

No, I’m sure you didn’t. I can’t expect that our dear corporate media cousins would have been so impertinent as to mention such a disturbing fact.

As noted here…

What McCain's promoters have carefully edited out of their McCain-for-president equation is his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Department of Defense psychiatrists have evaluated McCain for PTSD several times, the results of which remain locked by privacy laws.

PTSD can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which physical harm occurred or was threatened. U.S. government studies have concluded that former POWs "may remain embroiled in a harsh psychological battle with themselves for decades after returning home."

An outcome of PTSD is a subtle web of personal problems including difficulty in controlling intense emotions such as anger and an inability to function well under stress.

Psychologist Patricia B. Sutker of the New Orleans Veterans Administration Medical Center and her colleagues reported in a 1991 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry that as many as nine of 10 surviving U.S. servicemen taken captive during the Korean War may suffer from PTSD and other mental disorders more than 35 years after their release.

In a follow-up study, VA experts concluded that POWs suffer "a much greater risk of developing PTSD than combat veterans."

Continuing…

Robert Timberg, in his book, The Nightingale's Song, wrote that POW McCain "suffered terribly in North Vietnamese camps."

Timberg wrote that in July 1968, McCain was taken to a room in which the North Vietnamese POW camp commander, whom the prisoners had nicknamed "Slopehead," was waiting with 10 guards and an interrogator nicked named "The Prick."

The guards, according to Timberg, charged into McCain, beating and kicking him until he "lay on the floor, bloody, arms and legs throbbing, ribs cracked, several teeth broken off at the gumline." The Vietnamese wanted McCain to confess to being a war criminal.

It was then and there that McCain, Timberg noted, was introduced for the first time to the "torture ropes." He wrote that McCain was tortured for several days before he broke and signed a confession that he was a war criminal. After signing the confession, McCain was so distraught that he attempted suicide but was stopped when a guard burst into the room.

And let us not forget the following (living up to his “Senator Hothead” rep)…

In 1996, McCain encountered a group of POW/MIA family members outside a Senate hearing room. The family members were some of the same who worked tirelessly during the Vietnam War to make sure Hanoi released all U.S. POWs - including POW McCain.

McCain immediately began quarreling with the POW/MIA family members, who were eager to question him on the issue of what happened to their loved ones.

Instead (of) showing courtesy and appropriate compassion by answering their questions, the Arizona senator pushed through the group, shoving them out of his way, nearly toppling the wheelchair of POW/MIA mother Jane Duke Gaylor. Her son, Charles Duke, a civilian worker in Vietnam, is among 2,300 American POWs and MIAs still unaccounted for by the communists.

The POW/MIA families, shocked at McCain's overly aggressive behavior toward Mrs. Gaylor, registered complaints with senate officials.

It gives me no pleasure whatsoever to try and deflate John McCain in this way. As I noted, he has served our country courageously, and none of us should forget that.

But he brought this upon himself, but not being honest and forthcoming about what he endured and trivializing his torture (again, if he were a Dem, our media cousins would demand no less, maybe to the point where they would stop insinuating that Barack Obama is some kind of an alien life form who sounds like a terrorist and, instead, actually push to find out how stable McCain really is).

So the next time you hear McBush chatting it up with some T.V. talking head and tossing aside casual references to his captivity, ask yourself why his interviewer isn’t asking him when he last received a psychiatric evaluation and what the results were. And then ask yourself what it is that you think they’re trying to hide.

Update 1: More from Chris Kelly of HuffPo in a similar vein here (I loved that movie, especially the part where Jose Ferrer throws the glass of champagne in Fred MacMurray's face at the end)...

Update 2: And here's the latest from "Senator Honor And Virtue" (R-Too Many Homes...Eldon?).