The post’s title refers to an exchange between McCain and Air Force Lt. Col. John Dramesi, also held in Hanoi and tortured even more than McCain.
After they were back in the states, they were in different military war colleges when their paths crossed. Both colleges wrapped up with overseas trips to network with foreign military nad political leaders. McCain and Dramesi asked where each other was going:
“I’m going to the Middle East,” Dramesi says. “Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran.”
“Why are you going to the Middle East?” McCain asks, dismissively.
“It’s a place we’re probably going to have some problems,” Dramesi says.
“Why? Where are you going to, John?”
“Oh, I’m going to Rio.”
“What the hell are you going to Rio for?”
McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.
“I got a better chance of getting laid.”
Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. "McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man," Dramesi says today. "But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in.”
That WOULD give more background to him trotting out his old Brazilian flame Friday now, wouldn’t it?
Was he trying to hook back up, and give himself further schooling in his foreign policy bona fides at the same time?
Second, it’s not just Dramesi. Several other officers of the same time of service as McCain are quoted.
And, plenty of non-military people weigh in too.
McCain’s first media cultivation, the NYT’s R.W. “Johnny” Apple, also gets explained.
And, given that his first wife had previously been married to an Annapolis classmate of his, that explains, I’ll venture, why she has been so publicly accepting of getting dumped by him. She know the territory.
It’s a helluva story.
No comments:
Post a Comment