Steve Waldman has been covering the Cross Draw in Sand-Gate scandal that is heating up. It was the first time I had heard the story and found it moving. It would be absolutely nuts if it turns out to be some sort of hybrid memory. Here is Waldman's post:
Andrew Sullivan is offering a detailed account of how similar the McCain story is to that offered by Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsen and then later popularized by Christian leaders Chuck Colson and Billy Graham. Sullivan also points out other suspicious changes:
The story changed from the guard using a sandal to the guard using a stick.
At Saddleback, McCain talked about a single guard being the protagonist. The same guard loosened his ropes and then later sketchd the cross in the dirt. In McCain's 1999 book, these were two different guards at two different prison camps.
McCain's first writings about his time in captivity didn't mention the story at all, so he's asked his readers for evidence of McCain offering that story prior to his 1999 book (when he was gearing up for a presidential run).
Several contributors to the comment thread on my first post have pointed to this rather stunning New York Times piece from 2000 in which McCain tells the story - but about someone else!
Many years ago a scared American prisoner of war in Vietnam was tied in torture ropes by his tormentors and left alone in an empty room to suffer through the night. Later in the evening a guard he had never spoken to entered the room and silently loosened the ropes to relieve his suffering. Just before morning, that same guard came back and re-tightened the ropes before his less humanitarian comrades returned. He never said a word to the grateful prisoner, but some months later, on a Christmas morning, as the prisoner stood alone in the prison courtyard, the same good Samaritan walked up to him and stood next to him for a few moments. Then with his sandal, the guard drew a cross in the dirt. Both prisoner and guard both stood wordlessly there for a minute or two, venerating the cross, until the guard rubbed it out and walked away.
I don't know where all this is headed. It makes me very uncomfortable questioning someone's POW camp memories. It's possible this did happen but that McCain originally viewed the moment has being largely about the goodness of the guard, rather than his own faith. That would be a campaign misdemeanor, not a felony. But if this turns out to be substantially altered or made up, it will be absolutely devastating to McCain
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I could also care less if the story is true or not. Memory is not a precise instrument. We embellish memories all the time, tell ourselves stories to make sense of our lives.
The point is the double standard. If Obama had weaved some similar story and it turned out to have this many holes, the press would be running with it nonstop, 24/7, on every cable channel, is ability to be president would be questioned, and we would have to listen to talking heads opine about his pandering and the legitimacy of his faith.
Further, there is already evidence that McCain has cribbed other stories from other sources as well.
With McCain? Not so much. He is given the benefit of the doubt, and That. Is. It.
I will believe that mc cain told the truth when those who still believe there were w.m.d's in iraq and that obama is muslim say there no w.m.d's and obama is not a muslim
The cross in the dirt fabrication will be the least of McCain's worries when his POW nickname (Songbird) given to him by his fellow POW's, for telling all he knew so as to avoid torture. He made 32 videos for the North Viet Namese that at least one of them was broadcast in the South. Google McCain Songbird - check it out. His broken arms? Dumba** didn't pull in his arms when he ejected. I hope Obama is saving this for the stretch.
It seems crazy that so many people can't realize that McCain was, in fact, talking about himself in the speech quoted in the NYT. He was telling the story in third person, but any moron can tell that he wasn't speaking about some completely different person.
Twenty minutes into McCain's interview, he asked Pastor Warren "Are we going to get back to the importance of Supreme Court judges or should I...." Warren said "No, we're going to get back to that." BUT McCain and Pastor Warren had NOT YET TALKED about Supreme Court judges. ONLY Obama had already talked about it with Pastor Warren.
McCain either knew the questions in advance or heard Pastor Warren's questions to Obama and Obama's answers when McCain was in the "cone of silence" - his limo.
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