All of this talk about McCain's war record has made me curious --- I mean, is it usual to crash 5 planes? I know his daddy and granddaddy were admirals, and that presumably McCain meant to carry on that tradition. Why did that fall through?
I wandered around the internet a bit and here's a link to one of the web sites that seemed to do a fair job of providing references while describing the various crashes:
here
Here's another one that follows his career past Vietnam:
http://liberalscumbuster.wordpress.c...
One of the more interesting bits:
Robert Timberg, the author of The Nightingale's Song, a book about Annapolis grads and a friend of McCain wrote of McCain's first crash:
McCain was practicing landings; his engine quit and he plunged into Corpus Christi Bay. Knocked unconscious by the impact, he came to as the plane settled to the bottom.
But according to one of McCain's former flight instructors,
The engine was removed from the aircraft that afternoon, mounted on a test stand and a new propeller installed. [It] was flushed with fresh water and started. It ran just fine. So the theory of engine failure was proven false.
The instructor added that McCain was
positively one of the weakest students to pass our way, and received consistently poor marks and a number of Dangerous Down grades assigned by more than one instructor. He had no real ability and was clearly out of his element in an airplane, and way over his head even as a junior naval officer.
There seem to have been many who questioned whether his assignment as executive officer to the Replacement Air Group in 1974 was favoritism because his record hardly seemed to explain why he would have skipped the usual career route of first being a squadron commander.
Then there's this piece from former congressman John LeBoutillier
http://www.borderfirereport.net/...
--- this one tells an interesting story of a woman who asked McCain to help her find her missing-in-action husband. McCain is reported to have suggested she join him for dinner and in the limo run his hand up her thigh, repeatedly touching her while she tried to keep her distance. But hey, poor guy, his wife was pregnant so he probably wasn't getting enough action and that spoiled his judgment. The many extra-marital affairs he seems to have otherwise been involved with were apparently by mutual consent --- only this incident came before the Senate Ethics Committee.
Though I guess that's getting off-topic.
Hey, aren't the people who are supporting McCain the people who thought adultery was an impeachable offense a few years back?