John McCain: If World War III Then There’ll Be A Draft

   Last night during a telephone “town hall meeting” a potential voter in Florida asked John McCain if he would reinstate the draft.  McCain said: “I don’t know what would make a draft happen unless we were in an all-out World War III.”

Many of us are fearful that the U.S. government will be forced to reinstitute the draft given the prolonged Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the dismal recruitment numbers even though the US has had an all volunteer military since 1973.

“I do not believe the draft is even practicable or desirable,” McCain said.

I think it is great that McCain says there won’t be a draft unless there is World War III, but is WW III looming?

Last Friday, June 20, The New York Times published a report saying that more than 100 Israeli aircraft carried out an exercise in early June over the eastern Mediterranean Sea and Greece.

The article pointed out that the distances covered were roughly the distances from Israel to Iranian nuclear sites and that the exercise was a trial run for a large-scale air strike against Iran.

John McCain Wasn’t Tortured In Vietnam?

   When John McCain was my captive, “we never tortured him”.

So says Tran Trong Duyet – a sprightly retiree and amateur ballroom dancer – must rank as one of John McCain’s more unlikely supporters.

Four decades ago, during the Vietnam war, Mr. Duyet was in charge of the notorious Hoa Lo prison – the place where Mr. McCain says he was brutally beaten and tortured during five-and-a-half years as an American prisoner of war.

“McCain is my friend,” said 75-year-old Mr. Duyet as he feeds the caged birds he now keeps in his garden in this coastal city.

“If I was American, I would vote for him.”

Informal chats

Navy pilot John McCain was shot down during a bombing raid over the North Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, in 1967.

He ejected from his aircraft and parachuted into a city lake – only to be dragged out by an angry crowd, barely conscious, and with two broken arms and a broken leg.

From there he was taken to Hoa Lo prison, known to its American military inmates as the “Hanoi Hilton”.

McCain has since described enduring months of solitary confinement and systematic torture which drove him to try to kill himself.

“I don’t know how he’d react if he met me again,” said Mr. Duyet, flicking through old black and white photographs of himself and his American prisoners at Hoa Lo.

“But I can confirm to you that we never tortured him. We never tortured any prisoners.”