Fellow POW Won't Vote For McCain

Update: Tommy Christopher will be on Gold Meddles on Blogtalkradio at 11:15 or so tonight. Click Here to check ot out.

Dr. Phillip Butler, a former POW who also attended the US Naval Academy with Senator John McCain, writes an Op Ed in The Military Times telling why he will not be voting for John McCain.

The piece is full of anecdotes and observations that feed the current narrative against McCain; that he's too old, he has an explosive temper, he supports the failed policies of the Bush administration.

There are some very frank, and quotable, observations, as well:

Ø John is not a religious person, but he has taken every opportunity to ally himself with some really obnoxious and crazy fundamentalist ministers lately. Ø I was also disappointed to see him cozy up to Bush because I know he hates that man.

But what it also does, for the first time, is present a real challenge to the McCain campaign's playing of the "Hero" card.

...my point here is that John allows the media to make him out to be THE hero POW, which he knows is absolutely not true, to further his political goals.

Butler delivers a point-by-point accounting of McCain's time as a POW, in a way that only a fellow POW could. Some excerpts:

Was he tortured for 5 years? No. He was subjected to torture and maltreatment during his first 2 years, from September of 1967 to September of 1969. After September of 1969 the Vietnamese stopped the torture and gave us increased food and rudimentary health care. Several hundred of us were captured much earlier. I got there April 20, 1965 so my bad treatment period lasted 4 1/2 years.

It takes real stones to tell a guy he was only tortured for 2 years. Or it takes 4 ½ years of your own torture. This will undoubtedly be seen as an attempt to diminish McCain's experience, but that is clearly not the intent. Butler's thesis is that McCain's imprisonment has been painted as exceptional by POW standards.

...it must be remembered that he was one hero among many - not uniquely so as his campaigns would have people believe.

I'm not sure if I agree exactly with Butler. The impression that he mentions is definitely there, but I don't see that McCain has encouraged that perception.

What I do think, and was waiting for Butler to mention, is that regardless of the relative uniqueness of McCain's POW experience, it is unseemly at best to exploit it politically.

McCain has shown admirable humility in the past on this count, but in this campaign, his record as a POW has been used, alternately, as a line on the resume and a trump card to end arguments that cannot be won on the merits. Most recently, a McCain spokesman indicated that John McCain could not have listened to the questions in advance at Saddleback, because he's a former POW.

His stint as a POW has been touted in multiple campaign ads, and McCain himself invoked his service on the Senate floor to deflect Obama's criticism of McCain's opposition to the GI Bill.

Yet, when confronted by a fellow vet during a town hall meeting about his terrible voting record on veterans issues, he had no problem dismissing his brother-in-arms with a series of lies.

I imagine that Phillip Butler's stint as a POW and service to his country will be no impediment to those in the GOP who wish to discredit him rather than weigh the merits of his argument. McCain himself has shown no compunction whatsoever in siccing a member of the "dishonorable" Swift Boat Veterans for Truth on fellow vet General Wesley Clark.

What effect Butler's Op-Ed piece will have on McCain remains to be seen. The original Swift Boat Vets have muddied these waters significantly, making it likely that this will be dismissed as similar to those attacks.

The only way this really hurts McCain is if a large number of those 6 hundred that Butler refers to start coming out of the woodwork to join his chorus.