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Straight talk
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Feb. 17, 2000 | "I'll call right now my interrogator that tortured me and my friends a gook," McCain said in response to a question about a magazine story in which he is quoted referring to his prison guards by the epithet. "You can quote me," he said. "Anybody that does not believe that these interrogators and these prison guards were not cruel and sadistic people that deserve worse appellations than 'gooks,' they received appellations that were four-letter words," he said.
The use of the epithet doesn't quite square with the fact that McCain has been repeatedly lauded by observers for his ability to move beyond the unbearable torture he withstood at the hands of his Vietnamese captors. He provided political cover for the Clinton administration when it pushed to normalize relations with Vietnam, and also pushed for a resolution of the POW/MIA controversy. McCain aide Mike Murphy noted that the Arizona senator has "been criticized for not holding enough of a grudge." Just a couple of weeks ago, McCain was quoted in the Boston Globe as saying, "There are individual Vietnamese who, if I saw them again, I am sure I would attempt to inflict some physical punishment. But the South Vietnamese were our allies and friends, and they are now part of overall Vietnam. And my job ... was to help the healing and reconciliation process, so we could give help to those Vietnam veterans who had not come all the way home, to continue that journey." When asked if the term "gook" was appropriate, McCain insisted that he only used it when referring to "our prison guards. I will continue to refer to them in, probably, language that might offend some, some people here, because of their beating and torturing and killing of my friends." As well as himself. In his bestselling "Faith of My Fathers," McCain describes the "incredibly painful" torture he survived. One guard, nicknamed "the Bug," was a "sadist." Another, called "the Prick," smashed "his fist into the side of my head ... knocking me down ... every morning for nearly two years." Plenty of other guards, McCain writes, "seemed to enjoy their work." "On occasions when he [the Bug] was particularly determined, I would find myself trussed up and left for hours in ropes, my biceps wound tightly with several loops to cut off my circulation and the end of the rope cinched behind my back, pulling my shoulders and elbows unnaturally together." To this day, McCain cannot raise his arms to his head because of the injuries he suffered. Aides have to comb his hair for him. There were times the torture was so severe he attempted suicide.
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