A lot of this came out during the Presidentail Campaign but seems forgotten now. For example:John McCain's suicide attempt and his resulting PTSD
McCain says because he survived 5½ years of brutal torture, while a prisoner of the communist Vietnamese, he is better qualified to be president of the United States than any other candidate. McCain claims his POW sufferings included three years in solitary confinement where he was tortured so badly that he "broke," causing him to attempt suicide.
What McCain's promoters have carefully edited out of their McCain-for-president equation is his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Department of Defense psychiatrists have evaluated McCain for PTSD several times, the results of which remain locked by privacy laws.
PTSD can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which physical harm occurred or was threatened. U.S. government studies have concluded that former POWs "may remain embroiled in a harsh psychological battle with themselves for decades after returning home."
An outcome of PTSD is a subtle web of personal problems including difficulty in controlling intense emotions such as anger and an inability to function well under stress.
Voters have a way of ignoring things like this and focusing on the "patriotism" and such things. No one I know has
ever questioned the man's patriotism. That's not the issue. The issue is his power to inflict harm on the country in the name of a misguided patriotism. He loves war. It is who he is. So now he sees another chance. Syria. Middle East. Neocon stuff plus. This is a very dangerous man.
Let us also evaluate him for the way he treated his first wife who suffered through his captivity. Carol McCain
Carol Shepp grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[3] She first knew John McCain while he was attending the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis from 1954 to 1958. In 1958 she married one of his midshipman classmates, Alasdair E. Swanson, who had been a football and basketball star there.She and her husband, who became a Navy pilot, had two children, Douglas (born 1959) and Andrew (born 1962), and lived in Pensacola, Florida. The couple subsequently divorced in June 1964, after she sued him for infidelity. Five feet eight inches in height, Shepp was a successful swimsuit model and runway model for Jantzen swimwear in Philadelphia.
Shepp met McCain again when he was stationed at the Naval Air Basic Training Command at Pensacola, Florida in 1964, and they began dating[3][4] after her first divorce.[11] On July 3, 1965, Shepp married McCain in Philadelphia.[12] The following year, John McCain adopted her two children.[9] The McCains then had a daughter named Sidney in September 1966.[13]
John McCain was shot down and badly injured over North Vietnam on October 26, 1967, beginning what would be five and a half years as a prisoner of war.[14] During his captivity she raised their children by herself in Orange Park, Florida, with the assistance of friends and neighbors in the Navy-oriented community.[15] She sent frequent letters and packages to him,[15] few of which the North Vietnamese let through.[16] She became active in the POW/MIA movement,[7] while those around her wore bracelets with her husband's name and capture date on them.[15]
While visiting her family in Philadelphia on Christmas Eve 1969,[15] Carol McCain was driving alone in snowy, icy conditions. Approaching an intersection on an isolated country road, she skidded and collided with a telephone pole, was thrown from the car into the snow, and went into shock. Some time later, she was found and taken to Bryn Mawr Hospital;[10] she had two smashed legs, a broken pelvis, broken arm, and ruptured spleen. She spent six months in the hospital, and over the course of the next two years had 23 operations, which rebuilt her legs with rods and pins,[11] as well as extensive physical therapy. She did not tell her husband about the accident in her letters to him, believing he already had enough to worry about, and the U.S. State Department told a surgeon who operated upon her not to mention anything to the press, lest it worsen the treatment for John McCain. Businessman and POW advocate Ross Perot paid for her medical care and she remained grateful to him, later saying: "The military families are in Ross's heart and in his soul ... There are millions of us who are extremely grateful to Ross Perot." Years after John McCain found out about Perot's help, he said "we loved him for it." She was interviewed on the CBS Evening News in 1970, and said that Christmas had no meaning for her without her husband present, but that she carried on with it for the sake of their children.
The McCains were reunited upon his release from captivity on March 14, 1973. She was now four inches (ten centimeters) shorter, in a wheelchair or on crutches, and substantially heavier than when he had last seen her; he was also visibly hampered by his injuries and the mistreatment he had endured from the North Vietnamese. The McCains became frequent guests of honor at dinners hosted by Governor of California Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy Reagan, and the two couples became friendly.Carol McCain was Clay County, Florida director for Ronald Reagan's 1976 presidential campaign, as he sought the Republican Party nomination. During John McCain's assignment as Executive Officer and Commanding Officer of the VA-174 squadron located at Naval Air Station Cecil Field outside Jacksonville, Florida, Carol and John led an active social life together, entertaining other naval personnel at their Orange Park home and Ponte Vedra beach house. However, the McCains' marriage began to falter as he had extramarital affairs.
There is a lot more information about what he did to Carol, but I bring this up to try to show you that he is not stable and goes from reasonable behavior to sick behavior.
So he now sits there in the Senate making things difficult again. He is a problem and the fact that such a man could become a Senator is a problem for the country.
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