McCain channels Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Here's another case of McCain not allowing facts to get in the way of a good war story. CNN describes the moment from last night's Faith based forum.
McCain got teary-eyed while discussing an experience with a guard during his experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. The guard, McCain said, drew a cross in the sand while he was praying on Christmas Day. "For a minute there, we were just two Christians worshipping together."
The story set off alarm bells for rickrocket over at Kos, who decided to do a little research. He found this passage from The Gulag Archipelago:
Along with other prisoners, he worked in the fields day after day, in rain and sun, during summer and winter. His life appeared to be nothing more than backbreaking labor and slow starvation. The intense suffering reduced him to a state of despair.
On one particular day, the hopelessness of his situation became too much for him. He saw no reason to continue his struggle, no reason to keep on living. His life made no difference in the world. So he gave up.
Leaving his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a crude bench and sat down. He knew that at any moment a guard would order him to stand up, and when he failed to respond, the guard would beat him to death, probably with his own shovel. He had seen it happen to other prisoners.
As he waited, head down, he felt a presence. Slowly he looked up and saw a skinny old prisoner squat down beside him. The man said nothing. Instead, he used a stick to trace in the dirt the sign of the Cross. The man then got back up and returned to his work.
As Solzhenitsyn stared at the Cross drawn in the dirt his entire perspective changed. He knew he was only one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. Yet he knew there was something greater than the evil he saw in the prison camp, something greater than the Soviet Union. He knew that hope for all people was represented by that simple Cross. Through the power of the Cross, anything was possible.
Solzhenitsyn slowly rose to his feet, picked up his shovel, and went back to work. Outwardly, nothing had changed. Inside, he had received hope.
McCain even made a Christmas ad about it last year:
But McCain's ad doesn't even jibe with the story he told last night - notice the stick drawing the cross. Here's how McCain told the tale last night.
Iw was Christmas Day, we were allowed to stand outside of our cell for a few minutes, and those days we were not allowed to see or communicate with each other although we certainly did. I was standing outside for my few minutes, outside my cell. He came walking up. He stood there for a minute and with his sandal on the dirt in the courtyard he drew a cross and he stood there, and a minute later, he rubbed it out and walked away. For a minute there, there was just two christians worshipping together.
Stick or sandal, Senator? This is the Packers-Steelers story all over again, with the added twist of stealing a story from a dead Russian.
Ten bucks says the media don't even think of calling him on this.
Here's another telling of the story, under the title 'The Moment I Came to Love My Enemy.' Pretty ironic title coming from a man who once publicly took a life-long vow to the contrary.