Ex-POWs split on McCain playing up past

Ex-POWs split on McCain playing up past
By Rick Hampson - USA Today
Posted : Thursday Sep 4, 2008 8:17:02 EDT

ST. PAUL — Sen. John McCain is accused of talking too much about his experience as a prisoner of war, but many of his fellow Vietnam POWs say the Republican presidential nominee can’t talk about it enough.

In McCain’s acceptance speech, scheduled for Thursday, “we think he should play it up more,” said Dave Wheat, a retired Navy pilot from Minnesota who was a POW for more than seven years.

“People have always been interested in our experience, and they tout it more than we do,” Wheat said. “To say he’s milking it” — as former president Jimmy Carter did last week — “is a gross injustice.”

Tom McNish, shot down and captured in 1966, said the senator “is telling his story now to allow the American people to understand who he is.”

For the POWs, McCain’s nomination is a reminder of what they endured in captivity and achieved after it.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/gns_pow_mccain_090408/%2e