I don't intend to jump on every instance of failed "truthiness" that John McCain is guilty of, but this one seems particularly egregious. It's one thing to fabricate a story about a prison guard drawing a cross in the sand, but to tell it at a forum on faith?
Ugh.
The background: After McCain told the story Saturday about the sympathetic prison guard in Hanoi who quietly drew a cross in the dirt to indicate solidarity, a DailyKos reader grew suspicious. Turned out the story was almost identical to one written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in a series of stories about the Soviet Gulags, published in America in 1973, prior to any mention by McCain. Meanwhile, McCain did write a comprehensive account of his captivity in May, 1973—but oddly, never mentioned his moment of Christian solidarity—despite what seems like the perfect opening:
After that passage, he goes on to talk about communication, and how it sustained him. Still no mention of his communication with his Christian sympathizer. (Note: I highly recommend reading his article in US News. It tells a lot about the origins of his current mindset, including his views on "peaceniks" and his belief "that negotiation was not going to settle the problem.")
It also turns out that McCain—or his co-author, Mark Salter, is a big fan of Solzhenitsyn. Wouldn't he have remarked before if his story and one Solzhenitsyn told were so, uhh, similar?
His story should have been scrutinized before now—I mean, how plausible is it that a North Vietnamese prison guard—in a country that practices Buddhism—would secretly be a Christian sympathizer? And moreover, one who was familiar with the cross in the dirt story, which was first recounted in 1541? I didn't think prison guards were that well read—wasn't that sort of the point about Communism?
I've been known to stretch the truth, but even I would have to balk at such an implausible tale.
