John McCain

There is an incredible amount of misinformation floating around about Barack Obama. Even if any of it were true, would John McCain be any better?

At Annapolis, McCain graduated fifth from the bottom of his class. As a navy pilot he crashed two planes and caused an international incident in Spain when his plane cut power lines.

McCain was aboard the U.S.S. Forrestal, an aircraft carrier, on July 29 1967. An accident caused a fire that raged for days, killing 134 men and wounding more than a hundred. The fire aboard the Forrestal is considered the greatest disaster to hit the U.S. military that was not caused by enemy action since the end of World War II.

Where was John McCain while all this was going on? Witnesses say he sat in the officers' lounge watching the fire on closed circuit television. Apparently, his superiors were too busy to order him to get in there and help fight the fire. McCain is the kind of man who would watch television while his comrades are on the front line getting burned.

Adultery in McCain's first marriage led to divorce. These events are described in Tim Dickinson's October 16 article in Rolling Stone. Should we trust this source? There seems to be no doubt that McCain was aboard the Forrestal at the time of the horrendous fire. If he'd done anything heroic, his campaign would have taken out ads to tell us about it.

What about Sarah Palin? There is a video on YouTube of her addressing the Alaska Independence Party as governor. She was a dues-paying member of the AIP herself for a year until she dropped it to be more respectable. In her address to the AIP she says nothing about the United States, nothing about the need for unity or loyalty.

Dale L. Gillis
Sebring