Marvin Gandall wrote:
>
>
> In any case, my point remains that tears are invariably shed - including, to
> my great surprise, on this list - over McCain's history in Vietnam after he
> was shot down, and not over what he and his fellow "heroes" in the Hanoi
> Hilton were doing there before.
In the late '40s & '50s Navy pilots were regarded (by themselves and othrs) as the closest thing to Human Perfection achievable -- a true aristocracy. Now any aristocracy ought to be a bit self aware: they ought to be _conscious_ criminals rather than the unaware criminals who make up the vast bulk of enlisted personnel in the services.
It would of course have been politically unthinkable, but in purely judicial terms the Vietnamese would have been justified in executing all captured pilots.
Air crews shot down over North Vietnam were usually first captured not by military or police but by peasants. It's a great compliment to the self-restraint of the Vietnamese peasant that any of them ever survived to become POWs.
Carrol