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"Scam" ads the norm Trail Mix: Hillary haters spam cyberspace Gunning for the center Democrats make Hillary legit The blundering pundit Don Giuliani Campaign video: |
McCain's Return to Vietnam - - - - - - - - - - - -
DAY 1: AN HOUR AWAY McCain goes back
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April 25, 2000 | "That's what we called it, the day we were shot down: 'the day we were killed,'" he says. We're standing in a lounge in Los Angeles International Airport, a few minutes away from a 14-hour flight to Hong Kong, followed by a quick hop to Hanoi, Vietnam. About 33 years ago, on his 23rd mission, McCain was "killed" when, over Hanoi, a Russian-made surface-to-air missile blew the right wing off his A-4 Skyhawk dive bomber, sending his plane into "an almost straight-down spin," as he wrote for U.S. News & World Report in May 1973.
He's returning this week to participate in ceremonies commemorating the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Considering that he's returning to a place where he spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war -- tortured and beaten, years in solitary confinement -- McCain's mood is downright jocular. He drinks a V-8, munches on little shortbread cakes, rapping with the half-dozen reporters on the trip. His wife, Cindy, buzzes about while son Jack, 13, stares off into space listening to his portable CD player. He has been back maybe seven times since his release in 1973 -- once in 1974, with former cellmate Air Force Maj. George "Bud" Day, and then not until 1985 in a dreary televised trip with CBS newsman Walter Cronkite. Since then, he's been back as part of his official duties on the Senate Special Committee on POW/MIAs and as part of the lifting of the embargo on Vietnam in 1994 and the granting of diplomatic recognition to Vietnam in 1995. But the last time? He thinks that was November 1998, but he's not sure. His wife concurs; it was November 1998. Mark Salter, McCain's Senate chief of staff and the co-author of his bestselling "Faith of My Fathers," ambles over. "When were we last over there, Mark?" McCain asks. Salter says it was November 1998. Cindy raises her hands. "See?" she says. "Why don't you ever believe me?" she jokes. "Trust but verify," McCain jokes back. He wrote a detailed description of the day he crashed in 1967 in his U.S. News article: I pulled the ejection handle, and was knocked unconscious by the force of the ejection -- the air speed was about 500 knots ... I regained consciousness just before I landed by parachute in a lake right in the center of Hanoi, one they called the Western Lake. My helmet and my oxygen mask had been blown off. I hit the water and sank to the bottom. I think the lake is about 15 feet deep, maybe 20. I kicked off the bottom.As he bubbled to the surface of Truc Bach Lake, maybe two dozen Vietnamese dragged him to shore, where they beat him and stabbed him in the ankle and groin. Then he was taken into the custody of the North Vietnamese army. "We had smoother landings on our later trips," McCain jokes, referring to his subsequent visits to Vietnam.
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