Like Sands Through The Hour Glass, These Are The Cross Stories of My Campaign

Man, this Saddleback thing, it seems to be generating more questions than the "mirror-mirror" format used last evening.

To follow-up on our just posted "Blazing Saddlebacks" , there's, yes, another brouhaha in the making.

As we noted, Stumblin' Bumblin' John McCain went into hyper overdrive with his POW stories last evening ("McCain fired out the old POW tales as if there were a panel of judges, who would score them based on his detail and animation."), telling one in which, on Christmas, a guard drew a cross in the sand and he and McCain stood there silently, two Christians in worship.

All so touching, yes?

Well, hold off on the hankies, as the DNA of this little tale is taking more flak than that which knocked our Stumblin' Bumblin' Fly Boy out of the Vietnamese skies.

It appears, possibly, that Stumblin' Bumblin' John may have lifted the story from Russian author (how ironic this is) Alexander Solzhenitsyn!

McCain's "Cross In Dirt" Story Questioned

The source of that story about Solzhenitsyn is The Sign of the Cross, Fr. Luke Veronis, In Communion, issue 8, Pascha 1997 but clearly the story was known before 1997 for Fr. Veronis to cite it here. Update - the source is Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, published in the West in 1973.

So, is this story just more carefully-crafted Republican propaganda, one more "powerful story" intended to trick the Christians into voting for them, so they can give ever-greater tax cuts to the rich and subsidies (and drilling leases) to oil companies?

And in 2000 McCain told the story - saying it was a different prisoner.

Looks like McCain really WAS telling a whopper to get votes. And he's been caught red-state-handed.

Bob Cesca asks;

Weird. Given all of his experiences in the Hanoi Hilton, why would he borrow a story from someone else? Oh. That's right. He's McCain -- he'll do or say anything to win an election.

As Jed Lewison points out;

As for whether or not there's precedent for McCain fabricating POW stories, consider the fact that he claimed that he became a fan of ABBA's Dancing Queen before his capture (Dancing Queen came out two years after his release), and consider his convenient swapping of the Green Bay Packers with the Pittsburgh Steelers in another POW story when he was in eastern PA.

There may be a simple explanation of this - Cindy found it on the internet.

Otherwise ...

Oh Boy! ... Put on your raincoats, for it will be flying all over the place over the next few days.


Bonus "John McCain: Home of the Whopper" Links

Michael D: McCain’s Borrowed “Cross in the Sand” Story

dday: If A Nose Grows In The Forest...

Throwing Stones: McCain lies, contradicts himself on Cross story. With evidence

Calouste: No "cross in the sand" for McCain in 1973 [Updated x2] Story unlikely to be true