Real Heroes

From the memoirs of a Vietnam POW ¹ :

Prior to my arrival, Bill Lawrence had been languishing in Calcutta [prison camp] for weeks. He had been shot down four months before me, taken to Hoa Lo, and locked in a torture room, known only by its number, Room 18. There he suffered five days of beating and rope torture. From his cell he could hear the screams of his backseater, Lieutenant j.g. Jim Bailey, who was
being tortured in a nearby room.

[Later] The Vietnamese introduced a new torment to their punishment regime—flogging with fan belts. Prisoners were stripped and forced to lie facedown on the floor. Guards would take turns whipping them with fan belts, which unlike ropes and cords would only raise welts on the sufferer's back and not tear his flesh. They would not relent until their victim had mumbled his assent to whatever statement their torturers demanded he make.

…Guarion was the first senior to be taken. He was rope-tortured, sleep-deprived, clubbed and whipped for weeks, until at long last he broke and gave the Vietnamese an acceptable confession.

…what packages we were allowed to receive from our families often contained handkerchiefs, scarves, and other clothing items. For some time, Mike had been taking little scraps of red and white cloth, and with a needle he had fashioned from a piece of bamboo he laboriously sewed an American flag onto the inside of his blue prisoner's shirt. Every afternoon, before we ate our soup, we would hang Mike's flag on the wall of our cell and together to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. No other event of the day had as much meaning to us.

The guards discovered Mike's flag one afternoon during a routine inspection and confiscated it. They returned that evening and took Mike outside. For our benefit as much as Mike's, they beat him severely, just outside our cell, puncturing his eardrum and breaking several of his ribs. When they had finished, they dragged him bleeding and nearly senseless back into our cell, and we helped him crawl to his place on the sleeping platform. After things quieted down, we all lay down to go to sleep. Before drifting off, I happened to look toward a corner of the room, where one of the four naked lightbulbs that were always illuminated in our cell cast a dim light on Mike Christian. He had crawled there quietly when he thought the rest of us were sleeping. With his eyes nearly swollen shut from the beating, he had quietly picked up his needle and thread and begun sewing a new flag.

And THIS knucklehead, Obama, comes up with some lame excuse as to why he doesn't/won't wear a flag lapel pin…and he wants to be OUR PRESIDENT/Commander-In-Chief??!! He isn't worthy to tie the shoes of someone like Mike Christian. I wouldn't care if Bo-Bo the Dancing Kangaroo was running against Barack Obama…I'd vote for the kangaroo.

¹ From Faith of My Fathers, John McCain, Pgs 306, 320, 335-336. NOTE: Just because I quote John McCain, doesn't mean that I'm a big fan...but the guy's a hero in my book.