A little birdie e-mails with a quote from Al Franken on his good buddy John McCain:
"So I like John McCain. Anyway, I'm doing the White House Photographers Dinner and I go into my little McCain riff. 'Hey I like John McCain. And I think he's really courageous. I mean, his stance on campaign finance reform and tobacco. Wow. That takes guts. But this whole 'war hero' thing – I don't get it. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, he sat out the war. I mean, anyone can get captured! Am I wrong, but isn't the idea to capture the other guy?'"
(Al Franken, Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Plume, p. 176, 2004)
I'm sure that all the Vietnam POWs (you can learn more about their experience by watching the excellent documentary Return With Honor), some who spent seven years of their lives in captivity, will be have a good laugh hearing Franken's knee-slapper that they "sat out the war."
More on "sitting out the war":
Here, I tried to depict the "Vietnamese rope trick." The arms are repeatedly cinched up until the elbows are forced together. Sometimes at this point the "hell cuffs" are applied. The "hell cuffs" are handcuffs which are put on the upper arms and pinched as tightly as possible onto the arms, cutting off the circulation. The resulting pain is extreme. If the prisoner has not broken down by this time, his arms are rotated until shoulders dislocate. Words could never adequately describe the pain, or the thoughts that go through a man's mind at a time like this.
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