Yesterday the McCain camp finally bit on the speculation that his Cross in the Dirt story did not actually occur to him. Despite quite a number of people mentioning this and providing evidence or not, the McCain Report blog at his campaign website hit Daily Kos as the sole source of the speculation.
When I learned of this over at DU, I checked here to see what the Kos response was. It had not been posted yet, so I did a quick search of McCain's new witness to an early telling of the story, Orson Swindle. His board membership in the group Citizens Against Government Waste was on the first page, and CAGW's participation in money laundering for Jack Abramoff was well known.
So I posted these few facts, reprinted the McCain Report post attacking the Kos, and published. I also added my suspicion that McCain was using this battleground to force Obama into renouncing this site.
But in doing so, I got some items wrong. In typing, I called Mr. Swindle "Oscar Swindle", and his group "Consumers Against Government Waste." Small mistakes, to be sure, but the big one was still to be revealed. Mr. Swindle joined the board of CAGW in 2006, well after any illegal acts by the charity. In fact, Swindle may well have been an addition to help restore the good name of the organization.
Mr. Swindle served as a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission from December 1997 to June 2005. He served in the Reagan Administration from 1981 to 1989 directing financial-assistance programs to economically distressed rural and municipal communities. His positions were Georgia State Director of the Farmers Home Administration for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development.
In 1992, Mr. Swindle was national spokesperson for Ross Perot’s presidential campaign. He was the first national leader of United We Stand America and helped form Empower America in 1993. In 1994 and 1996, he was the Republican candidate for Congress in Hawaii’s 1st Congressional District.
As a Marine aviator, Mr. Swindle was shot down over North Vietnam in 1966 and held Prisoner of War in Hanoi for six years and four months. He retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1979 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He was awarded more than 20 military decorations for valor in combat.
Mr. Swindle is currently senior policy advisor for Hunton & Williams LLP, chairman of information security projects in the Center for Information Policy Leadership, a Distinguished Fellow at The Progress & Freedom Foundation, and sits on the board of directors of RSA Security, Inc.
Mr. Swindle is thus a person respected on both sides of the aisle. He worked in quite a respectable way with the Reagan Administration. He was also appointed by Clinton to the Federal Trade Commission in 1997.
Therefore, my publishing his connection to CAGW without verifying his time of serving on the board is an unwarranted smear. For that, I apologize to him and to you.
So this is where the Cross in the Dirt story stands: We have a popular Christian fable attributed to Aleksandr Solhenitsyn remarkable in detail to McCain's story. We have some seemingly contradictory accounts from McCain himself. We also have no account of this powerful story before 1999, even in places where you might expect the story to be told.
And McCain has Orson Swindle, the man who shared a room with him every day for two years in a Vietnamese prison camp. Orson Swindle says he remembers McCain telling the story at some point during this time.
McCain wins.
It doesn't matter that both could be mistaken and caught up in the vagaries of memory. Swindle is McCain's trump card here.
And what a trump card he is. Take a look at him in this promotional video for McCain:
You don't have to watch the whole thing. I only link so that you can watch Swindle himself at the beginning. Be honest with yourself. There is no laying a glove on that. If that's a habitual liar, there's no hope for the truth. The man reeks of honesty.
I urge all of us here to drop the subject of McCain's imprisonment unless it is to say, "We honor John McCain's time as a prisoner of war." No buts! And if this is the last time you give credence to a diary of mine, then that will be fine. Hear me in this alone: we attack McCain's POW record only to our peril.
It is far better to highlight McCain's growing record of voting with President Bush. Point out his own presumption at speaking for America in the Georgian crisis. Tell people about his Bush III tax plan. Make videos about his pro-choice record and his pro-life mouth. Remind them of his "100 years in Iraq" statements. He's in the pocket of Big Oil. He continues to suggest that Obama is committing treason. He wants to appoint Alito and Roberts clones. From the Keating Five to fake campaign finance reporter, there is plenty of things out there to legitimately take issue with McCain and reject him as the commander in chief.
With all of this, it's no wonder that a squabble over his prison camp experiences is the battleground McCain prefers.