[Politics] McCain's Navy Record - Stupid We Can Believe

[lysana]

The official story of the USS Forrestal fire says the missile that hit the jet fighter that was either manned by John McCain or the one next to him was a surprise malfunction in a missile system with a known track record of issues that nobody had done anything about. Back in the day, though, the press wasn't so sure about thatAs for the other four

Comments

[paka]

Not sure. The accounts that you've linked to don't seem to implicate him as having caused the incident so much as being one of the people hit, no? But I do understand that his service record is probably not the glowingly hyper-amazing thing we're all supposed to believe that it was.

[johnpalmer]

I don't think anyone's ever suggested that anything he's done was all that heroic, except, you know, HE WAS A POW! and never talks about it or lets anyone else make a fuss about it because he's so, you know, modest.

[kalimac]

Even subtracting the plausibility of McCain setting off the missile by wet-starting his jet,

How could he have done that? Any flame coming out of his jet would have gone backwards, and according to the diagram in the Wikipedia article, the plane whose missile went off was parked at about a 2 o'clock position relative to McCain's.

the fact he was enough of an ass to treat a jet engine like an overloaded Zippo lighter is not a compliment to his intelligence.

Do we know for a fact that he did that?

McCain may not have been a good pilot, but that has little bearing on his presidential caliber except insofar as it contributes to personality characteristics better measured by other behavior anyway. Swift-boating was not a decent measure of Kerry, and I don't like seeing it on McCain either, even if it's more justified.

[lysana]

There have been statements from his fellow pilots that yes, he was into wet-starting his jet.

As for the official records, McCain's plane or the one next to it went up like a flare gun when the missile hit. How did a missile at 2 o'clock hit either jet? That explanation is beginning to sound like a magic bullet.

And McCain is running on being a war hero and POW. He did not serve with honor or distinction, so his campaign basis is a fraud. Not swiftboating in the slightest to show the emperor has no clothes.

[featheredfrog]

Was everybody I know thinking about this yesterday? I wonder why.

Whoa whoa whoa.

[discodj]

McCain was sitting in his plane, minding his own business when the missle hit his plane. The missle was accidentally launched (for whatever reason) from another plane 100 or more feet away.

Blame many things on McCain, but not the Forrestal fire.

(Second time in two weeks, I've had to defend somebody I despise. I don't like this position. It's uncomfortable.)

PS - the footage was required material in Boot Camp. They showed it to us just prior to fire training.

Re: Whoa whoa whoa.

[lysana]

See my comments above. Even if the misfire was coincidental, McCain was a wet-starter. That would have exacerbated it. So, he was sloppy on the ground as well as in the air.

[maiac]

Oh, gosh, even in military he follows on the heels of George W. Bush, whose "service" in the National Guard was less than exemplary (also less than complete).