The wife John McCain callously left behind

By Sharon Churcher

Now that Hillary Clinton has at last formally withdrawn from the race for the White House, the eyes of America and the world will focus on Barack Obama and his Republican rival Senator John McCain.

While Obama will surely press his credentials as the embodiment of the American dream – a handsome, charismatic young black man who was raised on food stamps by a single mother and who represents his country’s future – McCain will present himself as a selfless, principled war hero whose campaign represents not so much a battle for the presidency of the United States, but a crusade to rescue the nation’s tarnished reputation.

McCain likes to illustrate his moral fiber by referring to his five years as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam. And to demonstrate his commitment to family values, the 71-year-old former US Navy pilot pays warm tribute to his beautiful blonde wife, Cindy, with whom he has four children.

But there is another Mrs McCain who casts a ghostly shadow over the Senator’s presidential campaign. She is seldom seen and rarely written about, despite being mother to McCain’s three eldest children.

And yet, had events turned out differently, it would be she, rather than Cindy, who would be vying to be First Lady. She is McCain’s first wife, Carol, who was a famous beauty and a successful swimwear model when they married in 1965. She was the woman McCain dreamed of during his long incarceration and torture in Vietnam’s infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison and the woman who faithfully stayed at home looking after the children and waiting anxiously for news.

But when McCain returned to America in 1973 to a fanfare of publicity and a handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered his wife had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries.

When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter. Through sheer hard work, Carol learned to walk again. But when John McCain came home from Vietnam, she had gained a lot of weight and bore little resemblance to her old self.

Today, she stands at just 5 ft 4 in and still walks awkwardly, with a pronounced limp. Her body is held together by screws and metal plates and, at 70, her face is worn by wrinkles that speak of decades of silent suffering. For nearly 30 years, Carol has maintained a dignified silence about the accident, McCain and their divorce. But last week at the bungalow where she now lives at Virginia Beach, a faded seaside resort 200 miles south of Washington, she told The Mail on Sunday how McCain divorced her in 1980 and married Cindy, 18 years his junior and the heir to an Arizona brewing fortune, just one month later.

Carol insists she remains on good terms with her ex-husband, who agreed as part of their divorce settlement to pay her medical costs for life. "I have no bitterness," she says. "My accident is well recorded. I had 23 operations, I am five inches shorter than I used to be and I was in hospital for six months. It was just awful, but it wasn’t the reason for my divorce. My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens...it just does."

Some of McCain’s acquaintances are less forgiving, however. They portray the politician as a self-centered womanizer who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to ‘play the field’. They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen, for financial reasons.

McCain was then earning about $50,000 a year as a naval officer, while his new father-in-law, Jim Hensley, was a multi-millionaire who had impeccable political connections. He first met Carol in the Fifties while he was at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. He was a privileged, but rebellious scion of one of America’s most distinguished military dynasties – his father and grandfather were both admirals.

But setting out to have a good time, the young McCain hung out with a group of young officers who called themselves the ‘Bad Bunch’. His primary interest was women and his conquests ranged from a knife-wielding floozy nicknamed "Marie, the Flame of Florida" to a tobacco heiress. Carol fell into his fast-living world by accident. She escaped a poor upbringing in Philadelphia to become a successful model, married an Annapolis classmate of McCain’s and had two children – Douglas and Andrew – before renewing what one acquaintance calls ‘an old flirtation’ with McCain. It seems clear she was bowled over by McCain’s attention at a time when he was becoming bored with his playboy lifestyle. "He was 28 and ready to settle down and he loved Carol’s children," recalled another Annapolis graduate, Robert Timberg, who wrote The Nightingale’s Song, a bestselling biography of McCain and four other graduates of the academy.

The couple married and McCain adopted Carol’s sons. Their daughter, Sidney, was born a year later, but domesticity was clearly beginning to bore McCain – the couple were regarded as ‘fixtures on the party circuit’ before McCain requested combat duty in Vietnam at the end of 1966. He was assigned as a bomber pilot on an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin. What follows is the stuff of the McCain legend. He was shot down over Hanoi in October 1967 on his 23rd mission over North Vietnam and was badly beaten by an angry mob when he was pulled, half-drowned, from a lake. Over the next five-and-a-half years in the notorious Hoa Loa Prison he was regularly tortured and mistreated.

It was in 1969 that Carol went to spend the Christmas holiday – her third without McCain – at her parents’ home. After dinner, she left to drop off some presents at a friend’s house. It wasn’t until some hours later that she was discovered, alone and in terrible pain, next to the wreckage of her car. She had been hurled through the windshield.

After her first series of life-saving operations, Carol was told she may never walk again, but when doctors said they would try to get word to McCain about her injuries, she refused, insisting: "He’s got enough problems, I don’t want to tell him." H. Ross Perot, a billionaire Texas businessman, future presidential candidate and advocate of prisoners of war, paid for her medical care.

When McCain – his hair turned prematurely white and his body reduced to little more than a skeleton – was released in March 1973, he told reporters he was overjoyed to see Carol again. But friends say privately he was "appalled" by the change in her appearance. At first, though, he was kind, assuring her: "I don’t look so good myself. It’s fine." He bought her a bungalow near the sea in Florida and another former PoW helped him to build a railing so she could pull herself over the dunes to the water.

"I thought, of course, we would live happily ever after," says Carol.

But as a war hero, McCain was moving in ever-more elevated circles. Through Ross Perot, he met Ronald Reagan, then Governor of California. A sympathetic Nancy Reagan took Carol under her wing. But already the McCains’ marriage had begun to fray. "John started carousing and running around with women," said Robert Timberg. McCain has acknowledged that he had girlfriends during this time, without going into details. Some friends blame his dissatisfaction with Carol, but others give some credence to her theory of a mid-life crisis. He was also fiercely ambitious, but it was clear he would never become an admiral like his illustrious father and grandfather and his thoughts were turning to politics.

In 1979, while still married to Carol, he met Cindy at a cocktail party in Hawaii. Over the next six months he pursued her, flying around the country to see her. Then he began to push to end his marriage. Carol and her children were devastated.

"It was a complete surprise," says Nancy Reynolds, a former Reagan aide. "They never displayed any difficulties between themselves. I know the Reagans were quite shocked because they loved and respected both Carol and John." Another friend added: "Carol didn’t fight him. She felt her infirmity made her an impediment to him. She justified his actions because of all he had gone through. She used to say, “He just wants to make up for lost time." Indeed, to many in their circle the saddest part of the break-up was Carol’s decision to resign herself to losing a man she says she still adores.

Friends confirm she has remained friends with McCain and backed him in all his campaigns. "He was very generous to her in the divorce but of course he could afford to be, since he was marrying Cindy," one observed. McCain transferred the Florida beach house to Carol and gave her the right to live in their jointly-owned townhouse in the Washington suburb of Alexandria. He also agreed to pay her alimony and child support. A former neighbor says she subsequently sold up in Florida and Washington and moved in 2003 to Virginia Beach. He said: "My impression was that she found the new place easier to manage as she still has some difficulties walking." Meanwhile McCain moved to Arizona with his new bride immediately after their 1980 marriage. There, his new father-in-law gave him a job and introduced him to local businessmen and political power brokers who would smooth his passage to Washington via the House of Representatives and Senate.

And yet despite his popularity as a politician, there are those who won’t forget his treatment of his first wife. Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a leading campaigner for veterans’ rights, said: "I have been following John McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is – deceit. When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it. Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was better. This is a guy who makes such a big deal about his character. He has no character. He is a fake. If there was any character in that first marriage, it all belonged to Carol."

Another old friend of the McCains said: "Carol always insists she is not bitter, but I think that’s a defense mechanism. She also feels deeply in his debt because in return for her agreement to a divorce, he promised to pay for her medical care for the rest of her life."

Carol has remained resolutely loyal as McCain’s political star rose. She says she agreed to talk to The Mail on Sunday only because she wanted to publicize her support for the man who abandoned her. Indeed, the old Mercedes that she uses to run errands displays both a disabled badge and a sticker encouraging people to vote for her ex-husband. "He’s a good guy," she assured us. "We are still good friends. He is the best man for president."

But Ross Perot, who paid her medical bills all those years ago, now believes that both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel – even by the standards of modern politics. "McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory," said Perot. "After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history."


Source: The Daily Mail
Published: Jun 8, 2008

Vermont says "Indict Bush"

Despite George Bush's rock-bottom approval ratings and his status as a favourite target of Democrats, the president has eluded attempts to hold him accountable for alleged misdeeds — except in Vermont.

During yesterday's Vermont presidential primary, two small towns in the famously liberal state also approved resolutions indicting Bush and vice president Dick Cheney for "crimes against our Constitution".

No specific crimes are mentioned, but organisers of the anti-Bush effort have referred to perjury, obstruction of justice and war crimes related to the Iraq conflict. The resolutions ask town attorneys in Brattleboro and Marlboro to draft indictments without outlining how to enforce them, giving the charges little practical consequence.

"I have not seen the proposal, and I've done no legal research on any of the issues," Vermont attorney general William Sorrell told the Associated Press before yesterday's vote.

"But at first blush, if this passed, they'd have really uphill sledding trying to have it be legal and enforceable."

That did not stop residents of the two New England towns, where the indictments passed by 18 votes in one public meeting and more than 200 votes in a separate ballot race. Vermont is the only state in America that Bush has yet to visit, according to published tallies.

Meanwhile, a more serious effort is underway in Vermont to rebuke the Bush administration's war policy, as several local legislators push for a vote on legislation recalling the state's national guard troops from Iraq.

George Bush + Climate Change = Global Disaster

Washington, DC — In his recent State of the Union address, Bush made it clear what we've been saying all along: He has no plan to fight global warming, and is set on leaving a legacy of neglect, obstruction and destruction when it comes to climate change. On the eve of Bush’s bogus "Major Emitters Meeting", activists have taken to the US capitol to call attention to Bush’s disastrous policies and his plan to put a wrench in the UN's process.

Major Economies Meeting a Sham

After being booed and jeered in Bali for trying to block a successful outcome at the UN's meeting on climate change there last month, the Bush administration continues to push its alternative Major Economies Meeting (aka Major Emitters Meeting) this week in Hawaii. The administration hopes to use this side meeting as an opportunity to replace the Kyoto Protocol's legally binding emissions reductions with voluntary measures only.

If the President was serious about leading the fight on global warming, he would stop trying to block the success of the UN process and commit to a cap on greenhouse gas emissions in the US. Instead, he continues to keep the United States standing alone as the only industrialized country that refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

Monumental Disaster

Greenpeace activists gathered on the National Mall the night before the Major Economies Meeting and turned the Washington Monument into a memorial to Bush's failed legacy on global warming.

The activists projected on the Washington Monument the message, "U.S. Global Warming Plan: Hell and High Water", accompanied by an image depicting rising sea levels at the base. Ironically, rising sea levels from global warming threaten the very picturesque islands, like Bali and Hawaii, the Bush administration is fond of visiting to talk and do nothing.

Why "volunteerism" is a failed policy

Binding emission targets for industrialized countries are the basis of any meaningful global agreement to fight climate change. Bush just wants to cross his fingers and hope that technological progress saves us. All he is willing to tell the world is: "Hey, guys, we will do our best". That will not be good enough.

As the German Chancellor Angela Merkel observed last year, "I don't believe that it's enough to just agree that everyone will do their best. I don't believe that would yield an impressive result."

And right she is. In 2002, Bush set a voluntary target of reducing US energy intensity 18 percent by 2012. But greenhouse gas emissions are projected to increase by 12 percent over that period. Voluntarism simply doesn’t work.

All of the leading Democratic Presidential candidates and two of the three top Republican candidates support binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions through a cap and trade system. US businesses also support binding emission caps. More than two dozen of the largest US companies - such as Ford, General Electric, GM, Dupont, Duke Energy and Chrysler - are calling for domestic cap and trade legislation to start cutting American emissions now.

Bush is a 'lame duck' and will be out of office when the next global climate agreement will be made in Copenhagen in 2009.

The world can't afford falling for Bush's Hawaii distraction. Countries attending the meeting should resist Bush's ploy and commit to real climate action now.

The countries participating in Bush's meeting are: Japan, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, China, Canada, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Australia, Indonesian, and South Africa. While the countries most at risk from impacts of climate change - such as small island developing states like Tuvalu - are not even invited to be at the table.

The dismal state of George W. Bush

By Walter Shapiro

About the only drama in Monday night's State of the Union address was provided by a clever speechwriter's gambit. Rather than offering a verdict on the nation's health in its traditional place at the beginning of the speech, George W. Bush waited a full hour until his penultimate sentence to declare, "So long as we continue to trust the people, our nation will prosper, our liberty will be secure and the state of our union will remain strong."

This was scant reason to miss the debut of HBO's "In Treatment" or to delay the thrill of cleaning out the medicine chest. The poignancy of the president's final State of the Union night was hard to detect, except when the network anchors needed to fill dead airtime by talking about it.

Bush was ballyhooed in advance as planning to speak of his guiding philosophy. But all he offered was the banal sentiment: "As Americans, we believe in the power of individuals to determine their destiny and shape the course of history. We believe that the most reliable guide for our country is the collective wisdom of ordinary citizens."

That ode to the genius of the American people invites a look at the president's popularity ratings. Bush came into this State of the Union address on a statistical roll that it will be difficult, if not impossible, for his successor to match. Beginning with the president's first formal State of the Union in 2002, each year he has stood before Congress with a lower approval rating (courtesy of the Gallup poll) than the year before. In January 2007, it seemed a daunting challenge to drop below his 36 percent approval rating. But Bush -- a president who fantasizes that he will be absolved by history -- was up to the task, falling below the one-third mark.

Any major Bush speech carries the built-in danger that the president will suddenly sound the drums of war by adding a new member to the Axis of Evil. Luckily, the citizens of places like Costa Rica and Estonia could go to bed feeling secure Monday evening.

But when it came to Iran, a charter member of the trio of evildoers, Bush waxed amnesiac. There was no reference to the latest National Intelligence Estimate that found that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program. Instead, Bush warned that Tehran "continues to develop its capability to enrich uranium, which could be used to create a nuclear weapon." He also demanded that the leaders of Iran "come clean about your nuclear intentions and past actions."

There is little that Bush could say at this point about Iraq that has credibility. And it seems almost unsporting to waste time parsing his words for omissions, misstatements and contradictions. Yet it was dizzying Monday night to hear Bush invoke Osama bin Laden -- he who shall not be named -- to justify his Iraq policy. It was a feat of presidential logic to argue, in essence, that multiplying two failures together (bin Laden and Iraq) equals success. As Bush put it, "Last month, Osama bin Laden released a tape in which he ... admitted that coalition forces are growing stronger in Iraq. Ladies and gentlemen, some may deny the surge is working, but among the terrorists there is no doubt."

On a day in which Senate Republicans failed to thwart the filibuster against the FISA bill, Bush limited his discussion of the topic to just nine sentences near the end of the speech. There was no public threat of a veto if Congress sends the president a 30-day extension for the eavesdropping legislation that will expire Feb. 1. And compared with possible Bush complaints about weak-kneed Democrats obstructing the war on terror, the president sounded positively muted when he said to Congress, "If you don't act by Friday, our ability to track terrorist threats would be weakened and our citizens will be in greater danger."

As the clock runs down on his presidency, Bush cannot avoid fostering the soft bigotry of low expectations. It was not much, but Bush does deserve a teaspoon's worth of credit for reiterating his humane approach to immigration, even if that sentiment would get virtually anyone else excommunicated from the Republican Party. On the eve of Tuesday's Florida primary, John McCain, a moderate on immigration, would not have dared to say as Bush did, "We must also find a sensible and humane way to deal with people here illegally." In GOP circles these days, "humane" is a fighting word.

Bush's new cause is to bravely battle against congressional earmarks. (In this case, he is a weak echo of McCain.) It is interesting -- and surely coincidental -- that the president only recognized the budget-busting folly of these pork-barrel projects after the Democrats took over Congress in 2006. Yet Barack Obama appeared to be cheering when Bush declared, "If you send me an appropriations bill that does not cut the number and cost of earmarks in half, I will send it back to you with my veto."

Alone among the three senators still in the race for president, McCain had the wisdom to skip the synthetic spectacle entirely and remain in Florida. Hillary Clinton would have been entitled to give one of her signature laughs when the president crowed that his "budget will keep America on track for a surplus in 2012." Bill Clinton, of course, bequeathed a balanced budget to his spendthrift successor in 2001.

The best rhetorical flourish of the evening, though, was not a product of the Bush speech-writing team but came from Obama. In a video released by his campaign, Obama said, "Each year, as we watch the State of the Union, we see half the chamber rise to applaud the President and half the chamber stay in their seats ... Imagine if next year was different. Imagine if next year, the entire nation had a president they could believe in."

A year from now, a different president (probably a woman, an African-American, a Mormon or a former POW) will be giving a maiden speech from the well of the House of Representatives. The nation will still be mired in Iraq and may well be battling to emerge from a recession. But one thing is certain: Nostalgia for the good old days when George W. Bush gave a State of the Union will be muted if not nonexistent.