Exactly! If having been a POW is the reason for his ongoing bad judgment then he needs medical care, not his finger on the nuclear button.

This ought to be the substance of many, many individually written letters to the editors of newspapers across America. This ought to be the substance of every discussion where McCain's brought up. This is perhaps the single refutation to McCain's constant citation of his ex-POW status. It's clearly damaged him - he's suffered terribly. (It helps that this is true.) He's suffered so much, he's so damaged by it, that he's simply not up to the demands of the Presidency of the United States.

Having been a POW doesn't qualify McCain for anything. It undoubted reinforced his belligerent nature. check out this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW4msHu_9EQ

He was not a POW. He was a combatant detainee. There's a big difference. Or so I'm told.

What really is starting to piss me off, is how often the MSM continues to protect him, even while they are acting exercised by his POW pronouncements. Just take the last two days transcripts from the left leaning Keith Olbermann show:

Countdown with Keith Olbermann – transcript, August 20, 2008

OLBERMANN: Last point and briefly, I‘m doing this out of order but it‘s either do it out of order or ask you to wait 20 minutes to answer one question. If either presumptive nominee suddenly revealed he did not disagree with the idea of reinstating the military draft, what would happen to the numbers that we‘re seeing in the polls tonight?

TODD: Well, look—already, you would see numbers move probably among young voters, but let me just go here and give McCain the benefit of the doubt on what he might have thought he was agreeing to which is—he has been a big advocate on the national service front, as has Obama as a sort of mandatory service in some form that you see a lot of politicians take. So, it is possible that that‘s what he was talking about.

Countdown with Keith Olbermann – transcript, August 21, 2008

OLBERMANN: How many houses do the McCains have?

FINEMAN: Well, am I under oath?

OLBERMANN: Do you have a staff to get back to me?

FINEMAN: Yes.
We‘ll, we reported in the magazine last year seven; now, there are some reports on the Web of eight. People have looked through lots of real estate records and so forth. I didn‘t count them all. I‘ve been in a couple of them and I was at the ranch in Sedona, by the way, before that redo. I was there I think in 2001. There was no swimming pool. The thing that, I think, got McCain tripped up is that, I think, legally, he probably doesn‘t really own them per se, himself. When he married Cindy, he married into a family empire of, at least now worth, at least $100 million. Those houses are probably mostly in her name. So, he doesn‘t really pay attention to the details, which, in its own way, is almost more damming than knowing how many houses you have.

Whereas I would honor any of our men and women who have ever served our country, McCain's tenure as a POW should disturb everyone with respect to his mental capacity to be President. In order to mentally survive torture, assault and physical abuse, whether at the hands of parents, rapists or, in this case, your captors, the human mind pretty much has to compartmentalize what's going on -- allowing the "real" person to retreat from reality in order to maintain sanity and separate from what is being done to them. McCain obviously suffered severe physical torture. No one knows what it did to his mind. Post-traumatic stress syndrome is not something that goes away or resolves easily. I remember a friend whose husband came back from Viet Nam and would never talk about his experiences. However, any time a car backfired on the street outside the home, he would instinctively throw himself on her or the kids to protect them. McCain was a womanizer before he went to Viet Nam and obviously afterwards. He got into Annapolis on the basis of his father's and grandfather's ranks as Admirals (which McCain was passed over for years later). He ranked about fifth from the bottom of his class of 900. Learned a lot about military history and tactics, did he? However, he clearly sees the world through the eyes of a warrior, as his first response to a political probelm is to destroy the enemy. His temperment and inability to control his temper are well-documented. He has been extremely disrespectful to his first and second wives (calling Cindy a C___ in public for teasing him about going bald, wet T-shirt contest, etc.) and is on record as not supporting a single so-called woman's issue that he has ever had a chance to vote on. He is a compulsive craps player and has had to be pulled back from the gaming tables in Vegas lest someone get the wrong (right) idea. Craps is a game of pure chance and epitomizes the rush of the gambler. His so-called Maverick appeal has been more attention-getting behavior or political positioning than anything else. So let's see, he is not particularly intelligent, he survived five years in captivity at an unknown cost to his psyche, he is a womanizer from way back and is disrespectful of women in general, he has never held a private sector job (other than as a beer distributor, presumably for Cindy's father), he is a compulsive craps player, a political opportunist of the worst kind nand his first impulse is to attack a problem militarily in a world of complex nuances. Did I mention that he was a POW?

Remember how quick and eager and fierce the McCain camp trotted out the argument that Obama was "playing the race card"? They're obviously trying to discourage Obama from ever bringing up the subject of race again, even when it might actually be to his advantage. They're trying to take one important aspect of Obama's biography off the table. They're trying to purge that biography from the public discourse.

So from here on out, every time the McCain Camp trots out the "McCain was a POW" meme, the Obama camp needs to bring out a Democratic ex-POW surrogate who roughs up McCain for "playing the POW card". Say he's trivializing and exploiting POWs for political gain.

Two can play at that game.

He gives POWs a bad name.

"Perhaps he offered his wife Cindy, the potential next first lady to particpate in a contest much more lude than a wet t-shirt contest because... 'he was a POW'."

Lauren, did you spell "lewd" this way because you are (al)luding to another drug problem we haven't yet heard about? I wouldn't put it past you.

I'm ashamed to read this kind of garbage.