Make-Believe Maverick : Rolling Stone

It's this part of the article that really nails McCain for who is is:
It was July 29th, 1967, a hot, gusty morning in the Gulf of Tonkin atop the four-acre flight deck of the supercarrier USS Forrestal. Perched in the cockpit of his A-4 Skyhawk, Lt. Cmdr. John McCain ticked nervously through his preflight checklist.
Then, in an instant, the world around McCain erupted in flames. A six-foot-long Zuni rocket, inexplicably launched by an F-4 Phantom across the flight deck, ripped through the fuel tank of McCain's aircraft. Hundreds of gallons of fuel splashed onto the deck and came ablaze. Then: Clank. Clank. Two 1,000-pound bombs dropped from under the belly of McCain's stubby A-4, the Navy's "Tinkertoy Bomber," into the fire.
McCain, who knew more than most pilots about bailing out of a crippled aircraft, leapt forward out of the cockpit, swung himself down from the refueling probe protruding from the nose cone, rolled through the flames and ran to safety across the flight deck. Just then, one of his bombs "cooked off," blowing a crater in the deck and incinerating the sailors who had rushed past McCain with hoses and fire extinguishers. McCain was stung by tiny bits of shrapnel in his legs and chest, but the wounds weren't serious; his father would later report to friends that Johnny "came through without a scratch."

The damage to the Forrestal was far more grievous: The explosion set off a chain reaction of bombs, creating a devastating inferno that would kill 134 of the carrier's 5,000-man crew, injure 161 and threaten to sink the ship.

These are the moments that test men's mettle. Where leaders are born. Leaders like . . . Lt. Cmdr. Herb Hope, pilot of the A-4 three planes down from McCain's. Cornered by flames at the stern of the carrier, Hope hurled himself off the flight deck into a safety net and clambered into the hangar deck below, where the fire was spreading. According to an official Navy history of the fire, Hope then "gallantly took command of a firefighting team" that would help contain the conflagration and ultimately save the ship.

McCain displayed little of Hope's valor. Although he would soon regale The New York Times with tales of the heroism of the brave enlisted men who "stayed to help the pilots fight the fire," McCain took no part in dousing the flames himself. After going belowdecks and briefly helping sailors who were frantically trying to unload bombs from an elevator to the flight deck, McCain retreated to the safety of the "ready room," where off-duty pilots spent their noncombat hours talking trash and playing poker. There, McCain watched the conflagration unfold on the room's closed-circuit television — bearing distant witness to the valiant self-sacrifice of others who died trying to save the ship, pushing jets into the sea to keep their bombs from exploding on deck.

As the ship burned, McCain took a moment to mourn his misfortune; his combat career appeared to be going up in smoke. "This distressed me considerably," he recalls in Faith of My Fathers. "I feared my ambitions were among the casualties in the calamity that had claimed the Forrestal."

The fire blazed late into the night. The following morning, while oxygen-masked rescue workers toiled to recover bodies from the lower decks, McCain was making fast friends with R.W. "Johnny" Apple of The New York Times, who had arrived by helicopter to cover the deadliest Naval calamity since the Second World War. The son of admiralty surviving a near-death experience certainly made for good copy, and McCain colorfully recounted how he had saved his skin. But when Apple and other reporters left the ship, the story took an even stranger turn: McCain left with them. As the heroic crew of the Forrestal mourned its fallen brothers and the broken ship limped toward the Philippines for repairs, McCain zipped off to Saigon for what he recalls as "some welcome R&R."

I agree Urban Gypsy. I saw David Gergen on Colbert last night. He worked for Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. He also worked to get "W" elected.

He flat out said that McCain and Palin need to get out front and tell their supporters that inciting death on Obama or Obama supporters is not acceptable.

I say Obama supporters instead of Democrats because we're not all Democrats and Obama is to be commended for the achievement.

David Gergen and I may disagree on many things but I respect that man and Republicans like him a lot.

I'm sure he too must be wondering how the heck did the Republican Party end up fielding a crop of candidates so screwed up that McCain and Palin are now leading the ticket.

That's where they need to look. McCain Palin is just a symptom of something that has gone seriously wrong with the Republican Party.

The symptom will be eliminated in less than a month with Obama's inauguration but the Republicans need to do some serious soul searching. Otherwise, they've stopped being a viable party for the foreseeable future.

oooH!
:)

i didnt know

Yeah, republicans aren't big readers. They've spent decades accusing those of us that read books, went to school, and studied the issues, "elitists".

Now that stupid republican ideology has come home to roost as their ranks are filled with the dumbest of the dumb.

And this in turn explains Palin who's defense is that it is about time that the stupid people are represented in the White House.

Yeeaaahhh.

Someone should whisper in her earpiece that we've already done that with george, and we're not real happy with how that turned out.

.

This is a brilliant piece of writing. Very depressing that most McCain fans won't bother to read it ...

I'M VOTING FOR THAT ONE!!!

Thank you for posting... I have to admitt I am a little bummed now... I see why the GOP base focus so heavily on lies and distortion... the truth about their candidate is depressing...

Oh god UrbanGypsy. There it is. They got it right.

Who would have believed that a magazine about music would have that sort of vision ?

Nice.

Very nice post!. Rolling Stone seems to be able to tell when politicians are faking it. Check out this article they prepared on Bush back in 1999 called "All Hat, No Cattle"

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/6482734/all_hat_no_cattle

Its scary how right they were...

McCain, married father of 3, from the report :

There's a distance between the two men that belies their shared experience in North Vietnam — call it an honor gap. Like many American POWs, McCain broke down under torture and offered a "confession" to his North Vietnamese captors. Dramesi, in contrast, attempted two daring escapes. For the second he was brutalized for a month with daily torture sessions that nearly killed him. His partner in the escape, Lt. Col. Ed Atterberry, didn't survive the mistreatment. But Dramesi never said a disloyal word, and for his heroism was awarded two Air Force Crosses, one of the service's highest distinctions. McCain would later hail him as "one of the toughest guys I've ever met."

On the grounds between the two brick colleges, the chitchat between the scion of four-star admirals and the son of a prizefighter turns to their academic travels; both colleges sponsor a trip abroad for young officers to network with military and political leaders in a distant corner of the globe.

"I'm going to the Middle East," Dramesi says. "Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran."

"Why are you going to the Middle East?" McCain asks, dismissively.

"It's a place we're probably going to have some problems," Dramesi says.

"Why? Where are you going to, John?"

"Oh, I'm going to Rio."

"What the hell are you going to Rio for?"

McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.

"I got a better chance of getting laid."

Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. "McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man," Dramesi says today. "But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in."

And this is who the republicans picked to lead their ticket and who then picked Palin. Stunning.