Fidel Castro discussed McCain, Vietnam and more

=========================================================
Fidel Castro discussed McCain, Vietnam and more
in his five-part reflections on the GOP candidate:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/fc-mccain-2008.html
=========================================================

sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-floservice0928sbsep28,0,171705.story
South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
John McCain's convictions were formed at Hanoi Hilton
Years in Hanoi Hilton shaped his outlook on war, government

By William E. Gibson

Washington Bureau Chief

September 28, 2008

While sharing a cell in Vietnam in the late 1960s, John McCain and fellow prisoner of war Bud Day talked about politics almost incessantly.

Both had suffered broken bones, resisted interrogation and endured rounds of torture.

McCain later wrote that after periods of isolation he would talk nonstop whenever guards placed him with Day or other American prisoners.

Inevitably the talk turned to politics, part of a formative experience under the cruelest of circumstances for this year's Republican presidential candidate.

If you want to understand McCain — how he became a hawkish conservative who dwells on national security, influences policy in Iraq and wants to reform Washington — these conversations at the infamous Hanoi Hilton provide some insight.

"We both liked Ronald Reagan and also George Wallace, who was running for president at that time," said Day, 83, who has settled near Fort Walton Beach in the Florida Panhandle.

"We liked Reagan, who was governor of California, because he stood up to student protesters. There had been a lot of anti-war riots, and Reagan dealt with that very effectively.

"We liked George Wallace because he was campaigning for states' rights."

McCain still invokes Reagan as his personal hero and in most respects he wants to restrain the powers of the federal government.

More significant at the time, the prisoners deplored the way then- President Lyndon Johnson, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Congress micromanaged the Vietnam War. "John learned what not to do, as did I," Day said of the actions taken in Washington. "We did admire Richard Nixon, who finally got around to bombing North Vietnam, which is what set us free."

Almost four decades later, McCain supported U.S. intervention in Iraq but accused then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of micromanaging the war, of contradicting commanders and of failing to provide enough troops to secure the country.

McCain lashed out at war critics in Congress for threatening to cut off funds and called for a surge of additional troops, a policy eventually adopted by President Bush.

McCain's persona as a warrior reformer began in those Vietnam years.

"It took a piece of iron and turned him into steel," Day said.

The Vietnam experience gave McCain a lifelong abhorrence of tyranny and of the Cuban government. It helps explain his stout support for the U.S. embargo of Cuba today.

In his memoir Faith of My Fathers, he recalled being interviewed by a Cuban "propagandist masquerading as a psychiatrist" who called McCain a psychopath because he showed no remorse for bombing the Vietnamese.

Most of all, McCain developed the belief that war should not be waged in half-measures.

"It was a shameful waste to ask men to suffer and die, to persevere through awful afflictions and heartache, for a cause that half the country didn't believe in and our leaders weren't committed to winning," he wrote in his memoir.

McCain and Day remain close friends. The wounded warriors forged an unbreakable bond in Vietnam, and they still share a fondness for the shores of north Florida, where McCain was based before and after his time in Vietnam.

"I can't say I thought he might be president some day, but I did see him reaching for elective office," Day said. "He would be very well-prepared for the presidency."

Copyright © 2008, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

=========================================
WALTER LIPPMANN
Los Angeles, California
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
"Cuba - Un Paraíso bajo el bloqueo"