Oops?

There was a line in Sen. McCain's POW story as told by him at the RNC last night that caught my attention. "I was feeling terrible after one interrogation. They had broken me and I was as low as I had ever been."

He then told of how another prisoner reassured him by means of taps through the wall that he would come out of his depression and was okay.

"They had broken me," Sen. McCain said.

In the context of statements by another POW that McCain became an advocate for normalization when he returned from Vietnam, that little phrase leaves me wondering: what did McCain give up to the Vietnamese in that incident? What did he promise? What did he gain by breaking? What happened that depressed him so much as he returned to his cell?

In one sense, I do not care what actually happened because under the circumstances, I cannot say I would have done anything differently. I can imagine being tougher but no one who knows me would believe it.

But in another sense, I would really like for Sen. McCain to explain what actually happened that particular time and any other times he has not acknowledged during which he may have given in to his captors.

Why? Because then maybe we'd have a better idea what has motivated him all these years.

If I understand Sen. McCain's history correctly, he did not start out fighting corruption when he entered Congress. He was a "loyal footsoldier" for President Reagan. He did not get interested in fighting corruption until after he was caught in the middle of the Keating Five scandal. Was it just good cover to become outspoken against the very thing he had been caught doing?

Is it just good cover to play the POW card all the time for every challenge because Sen. McCain has been some kind of "Manchurian Candidate" since he returned from Vietnam?

I wish Sen. McCain would tell the story behind his being "broken." Up till now, I had the impression that he had never been. Did I miss something?

What is that all about?

There are some puzzling things going on that I hear from the internet but not from the mainstream media.

In Denver, three men with a large camera hollowed out to contain a gun, high-powered rifles and ammunition, and stating they were planning to kill Sen. Obama during the convention, were arrested. They were caught with a little meth. The federal attorney, an old colleague of Karl Rove, chose not to charge the men with anything serious. "They are 'meth heads' and weren't ever a serious threat." That got about twenty seconds on one of the nightly news programs.

Meanwhile in St. Paul, armed police and sheriff department squads of two to three dozen men surrounded and disrupted peace groups who had rented homes in the Twin Cities. Pictures showed up on the internet but not on TV.

Thousands of protesters paraded peacefully in St. Paul but I never heard a word about them in the news. Thousands? No notice to the rest of the world on the public media. . . .

At another demonstration that started peacefully, the police moved in sweeping up everyone "that was in their way." Two of those people were wearing press credentials and were preparing to video the gathering when the police moved in. Those two, one with a Hispanic name and one with a Middle Eastern name, were being physically hassled when Amy Goodman who is a well known journalist (also wearing press credentials) came up to the officer who injured her staff only to herself be arrested. The video is on YouTube . . . but not on television.

One of the guys involved in the "Swift Boating" of Sen. John Kerry, Ted Sampley, is quoted as saying that John McCain has never fully disclosed the "extent to which he cooperated with the Vietnamese." Sampley is also angry with how McCain actively advocated for normalization with Vietnam after the war, an action which essentially ended efforts to return POW/MIAs, despite "credible evidence" that there were Americans still alive there.

The Manchester GUARDIAN printed an interview with Sen. Joe Biden who reaffirmed that in an Obama administration, the Attorney General would research what is already known to see if any of the things done by the Bush Administration were criminal, such as torture, rendition, etc. Too bad Manchester is in England! This hasn't been reported here.

Did you know that Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who still has delegates ready to vote for him instead of Sen. McCain, held rallies in Minneapolis that brought more people than the Republican National Convention? The rallies were planned after the planning committee for the RNC offered no place on the program for Rep. Paul. If it hadn't been for the internet, I wouldn't have known it either!

A new ad involving a former Vietnam POW mentions that not long after Sen. McCain was captured, Ho Chi Min died. The new government was not nearly as cruel in their treatment of POWs as Ho had been.

I've only seen these bits online myself. But I don't have the resources to research the issues and background which the media have to check out the meaning of these bits.

Maybe I'm getting old and incompetent but when I run into things like the above that seem to be newsworthy, but are not noted in the press or network news, I really have no idea what that is about.