Supporters of John McCain in South Carolina are describing as "absolutely despicable" a flier (see right) claiming that he turned his back on fellow prisoners of war in Vietnam. Now it turns out that the man behind it all hails, far from South Carolina, up here in my home county of Rockland, just north of New York City. I've found a quote from our local paper, the Journal News, in which the man, Jerry Kiley, who lives in the tiny town of Garnerville, said last March that McCain had turned his back on POWs and their families. He called McCain a traitor to prisoners of war who he believes were left behind in Vietnam. “If he had the power of the presidency, I’d really fear for this country,” Kiley said.
The Journal News also reports that Kiley "once confronted a female Manhattanville basketball player who was protesting American policy by turning her back on the flag. He sneaked past security and interrupted a game to confront the college student on the court with an American flag." On his Web site, Kiley bills himself as Vietnam vet, "a key figure in the battle for U.S. POWs and MIAs and other U.S. veteran issues since 1983," a consultant to a billion dollar New York company.
The flier in South Carolina features a cartoon of McCain, a former POW, sitting in a cell and a supposed "fact sheet" accusing him of collaborating with his captors. You will remember that McCain was victimized by other smears in the state (fathering a black baby?) when he ran, and lost, there in 2000.
The First Read blog at msnbc.com reports, "The mastermind of the anti-McCain veterans mailer, Jerry Kiley of the group Vietnam Veterans Against McCain, told NBC News/National Journal that he created the ad, and it was printed and mailed by a group that publishes the like-minded journal US Veteran Dispatch. According to Kiley, who ran a similar group in 2004 that opposed John Kerry, the flier was distributed to 80 editors at newspapers throughout South Carolina, and that it was not mailed to any households. Kiley says he was not in contact nor did he accept any funding from any political campaign .... Among Kiley’s claims is that McCain gave his captors information about U.S. flight paths in exchange for better medical care after being shot down in Hanoi. He added that a similar effort to discredit McCain will be made in other states in the future."
4 comments:
I walked into my employers office and there were photos from the possible Amelia Earhart "crash site" island and the people involved. There was also a brochure of people who wanted to bring up former President H.W. Bush's airplane from beneath the sea, lost in WWII. I worked for an archaeologist. I recall at the time that there was OpEd "flak" from someone who served in George HW Bush's air group contesting the official story, said it not correct and there was a responsibility of the former flier, Yale "Skull and Bones" member, CIA director, Vice and then President's version denied, according to his fellow veterans. Anyway TIGHAR is still looking for Earhart and Noonan, and I spent a lot of time on line looking for Steve Fossett.
I wonder if they had given back allegedly, Geronimo's skull and all (others?) if this apparent Yale U. feud would have happened (alumni Bushes, Clintons, John Kerry, Ralph Nader, et al.) and if it doesn't inspire more of them?
I followed the Swift Boat controversy very closely. The mainstream media has successfully implanted the notion that Kerry was a victim of a vicious smear - "swiftboating" is now a verb. But where there was smoke, there certainly was fire. Kerry never sued, nor released his records, did he? Why is everyone so quick to drape the mantel of patriotism over McCain? What accounts for his bitter and successful battles over the years to keep POW/MIA records classified?
The "efforts to discredit" John McCain appear to have been based on facts, unlike the Swiftboat efforts.
There is new scholarship that documents how John McCain betrayed Vietnam POWs and their families:
McCain and the POW Cover-up http://www.nationinstitute.org/p/schanberg09182008pt1
Just now i read the story its nice to read and also interesting.I hope that it will reach its peak.
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