McCain a hero who exploited his story

On Aug. 18, John Hurley suggested that John McCain was not a hero for his actions during Vietnam.

I agree and disagree with him at the same time. It is true that being captured in and of itself did not make him a hero.

What gave him hero status was giving up his place on the bus so that another could go home. It was without a doubt a most selfless act since he already knew what kind of treatment he would receive from his captors.

What cheapens a selfless act is the continued political exploitation of that period through self-serving commercials.

To imply that a single act means that we owe him a seat in the Oval Office is a travesty.

If he had used that event to begin and build on a career of helping the less fortunate, that would have been something quite different.

Instead he chose to become complicit in the largest savings and loan rip off that destroyed the life savings of thousands of retired people.

He has continued to exploit the uninsured children, the maimed veterans that he has helped create through his mindless support of an idiot adventure.

He has pandered to those who he properly called the "agents of intolerance." He has continued to pander to the desires of the integrated oil companies who cry crocodile tears while driving the armored cars from your bank to theirs. He has continued to deny the right of a woman to choose the destiny of her own body. He has gleefully sought to deny birth control programs that would prevent the need for the abortions.

I find it mind-boggling that McCain and the rest of the party of lemmings accuse Obama of being an elitist considering the pampered childhood and post-Vietnam life that McCain has led.

The Republicans have never met a socially or economically shortchanged person that they couldn't ignore with ease.

No, Mr. McCain didn't cheapen the word "hero" by what he did in Vietnam. He has tarnished it with his actions for the next 50 years.

James Prescott

Schaumburg