Page 398 - Captivity News Today

Let me go to you first, colonel jacobs. the captivity, the imprisonment, the p.o.w. status of john mccain for five years, are you, yourself, given medals for your bravery in vietnam, did you and senator mccain ever discuss his captivity and what he went through and how it impacted and affected the rest of his life? >> yeah, we did. we talked about it from time-to-time. i knew a lot of people in prison with him who said, despite the fact that senator mccain had caved, eventually, they found his b...

Captivity. >> i think it was spicy chicken that he loved the most. jonathan alter, thank you for sharing a very personal side of john mccain. we have many accolades and we have presidential historians that are going to put this all in perspective, journalists like you, but got to say, we love the nugget stories. theyre great. thank you, jonathan. >> thanks, alex. in just a moment, early word on plans for the final farewell for the maverick of the senate. >> john mccain was one of the greatest ...

A skoch underneath what a president would offer. to what do you attribute that? is it this perspective you offer? was he able to reach more than just those in his party because of it? >> he was. i think the -- i think the -- what i mean when i say he learned perspective from his captivity and his combat service is he understood that realitys complicated. that fate and destiny are chancy things, and it enabled him to be unideological -- nonideological i guess is the better term. he was an umpire ...

Service to the country. very few people have been tested in the ways that he was tested, physically, psychologically, emotionally and patriotically. the fact that he emerged from the caldron of captivity in vietnam is an enduring lesson, an invigorating lesson for all of us who think our politics is so broken. our politics is so terrible. they may be broken, it may feel terrible but this is still the last best hope. >> thank you so much. more of our coverage of the death of arizona senator john ...

Well so it was in violation of everything he believed in. john mccain and john kerry were not likely allies. they didnt trust each other. john kerry wrote an interesting tribute to him that they didnt trust each other, they didnt know each other and then they went to hanoi together, one who suffered so goorievously, one w fought and returned and was a protester against the war and mccain told him that they in captivity heard there was a naval officer who threw his medals down and his ribbons dow...

Cutta, and they called those people tigers because they would go in there, and in these horrible conditions of captivity, he survived the forestal fire, the single mass conflageration and john mccain was literally in the middle of that explosion as airplanes were splashing around him. this man is a giant not just in the u.s. navy. thank god he will be buried next or near john paul jones. >> ill tell you next if you asked him he would say he failed. and he failed because although everybody says i...

Senator john mccain, who died last night at 81 was a decorated war veteran, a p.o.w. survivor who was severely injured during his captivity in vietnam. he served in both the house of representatives and the u.s. senate as a republican. he lost his bid for the presidency, as the partys nominee in 2008. but, above all, john mccain will be remembered as a patriarch, hero, an american original. joining me now is jack jacobs, retired u.s. army colonel and honor recipient, msnbc military analyst and c...

President clinton to recognize vietnam. and i went to vietnam and with his help saw a lot of people involved with that issue. and you have to understand that after five and a half years of captivity, john mccain came home with no bitterness. and he -- toward anti-war protesters. and he sat at the deathbed of an anti-war protester named david ipchin when he was dying of cancer and he went to the hospital every day, the same way he did with democrat morris udall, another good friend. and there was...

Him. they were trying to blow him out of the sky. surviving that fall, that canopy -- that ejection, surviving being dragged out of the water and beaten up and then all of the horrible things that happened to him in captivity, including but not limited to more than one surgical procedure without any anesthesia at all during that famous propaganda interview that black and white film of which weve been showing all evening long. he was a man on the edge of survival right then while being asked thos...

The americans held in captivity were released. 5 1/2 years after he was pulled from that lake in hanoi, john mccain finally was freed. >> mccain had aged so dramatically from the young man who crashed his plane. when he came down the steps in california and greeted and limped across the tarmac it was such a dramatic moment. coming up -- >> the notion that anyone would question his honesty or integrity was so antithetical to who he was that i think he was at the point to where he was willing to...