Post
by Edwards Kings » Thu May 05, 2016 4:06 am
Stockdale, over say just about ANYONE who has served as VP recently, would have been a HUGE upgrade, at least in the character department, though no one seems to give a crap about character. In general, I am with Dennis Miller on Stockdale:
"Stockdale, who was intended only as a fill-in until Perot could find another running mate, made an unimpressive appearance at a vice presidential debate with Dan Quayle and Al Gore. But Stockdale was a decorated prisoner of war in Vietnam, and Miller says he was turned off by the mockery.
"You know, Stockdale, we would have been blessed to have him as a president. I don't care if he's bad on TV. He was a hero and an icon," Miller said. "I saw people on the left go, 'Who's this old guy who's bad on TV?'"
Miller described Stockdale as a man "who tapped out Morse code to keep kids alive in the Hanoi Hilton" and who never gave up the faith and returned home safely."
Remember Stockdale was awarded the Medal of Honor in the Vietnam War where he was a prisoner of war for over seven years. Stockdale was the highest-ranking naval officer held as a prisoner in North Vietnam. He had led aerial attacks from the carrier USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14) during the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident. On his next deployment, while Commander of Carrier Air Wing 16 aboard the carrier USS Oriskany (CV-34), he was shot down in North Vietnam on September 9, 1965. Stockdale ejected from his Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, which had been struck by enemy fire and completely disabled. He parachuted into a small village, where he was severely beaten and taken prisoner.
Stockdale was held as a prisoner of war in the Hoa Lo prison (the infamous "Hanoi Hilton") for the next seven and a half years. As the senior Naval officer, he was one of the primary organizers of prisoner resistance. Tortured routinely and denied medical attention for the severely damaged leg he suffered during capture, Stockdale created and enforced a code of conduct for all prisoners which governed torture, secret communications, and behavior. In the summer of 1969, he was locked in leg irons in a bath stall and routinely tortured and beaten. When told by his captors that he was to be paraded in public, Stockdale slit his scalp with a razor to purposely disfigure himself so that his captors could not use him as propaganda. When they covered his head with a hat, he beat himself with a stool until his face was swollen beyond recognition. When Stockdale was discovered with information that could implicate his friends' "black activities", he slit his wrists so they could not torture him into confession.
Early in Stockdale's captivity, his wife, Sybil Stockdale, organized The League of American Families of POWs and MIAs, with other wives of servicemen who were in similar circumstances. By 1968, she and her organization, which called for the President and the U.S. Congress to publicly acknowledge the mistreatment of the POWs (something that had never been done despite evidence of gross mistreatment), gained the attention of the American press. Sybil Stockdale personally made these demands known at the Paris Peace Talks.
Stockdale was one of eleven prisoners known as the "Alcatraz Gang": George Thomas Coker; George McKnight; Jeremiah Denton; Harry Jenkins; Sam Johnson; James Mulligan; Howard Rutledge; Robert Shumaker; Ronald Storz; and Nels Tanner. These individuals had been leaders of resistance activities while in captivity and thus were separated from other captives and placed in solitary confinement. "Alcatraz" was a special facility in a courtyard behind the North Vietnamese Ministry of National Defense, located about one mile away from Hoa Lo Prison. In Alcatraz, each of the prisoners was kept in an individual windowless and concrete cell measuring 3 by 9 feet (0.91 by 2.74 m) with a light bulb kept on around the clock, and they were locked in leg irons each night.Of the eleven, Storz died in captivity there in 1970.
"I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade."
His debate performance was marred by the fact he was hearing impaired due to his injuries from his imprisonment. This is the guy the Left (and some on Right) and certain comedians made fun of.
They (or me) are not fit to even walk in his shadow.
EDIT: To be clear, I do not think Admiral Stockdale would have been a good vice-president. The obvious shortcomings in public speaking, many of which were caused by his POW experience, would have been a serious detriment. However, when compared to the Plagiarist (Biden), the Hunter (Cheney), the Inventor of the Internet (Gore), and Potatoe Boy (Quayle) he would have been an upgrade.
Baseball is a slow, boring, complex, cerebral game that doesn't lend itself to histrionics. You 'take in' a baseball game, something odd to say about a football or basketball game, with the clock running and the bodies flying.
Charles Krauthammer
