by Craig Rhodes

Anyone who has seen the Tom Cruise movie Top Gun will remember the scene in which the Cruise character, Maverick, flies upside down...cockpit to cockpit during a dogfight with a Soviet pilot. However, most people don't know that the scene was based on a real incident that occurred during the Vietnam War.

There were only two Navy aces during the Vietnam war, one of whom was the inspiration for the aforementioned scene in Top Gun. This particular pilot found himself in a grueling extended dogfight with one of North Vietnam's top pilots known as "Colonel Tomb" during which the "cockpit to cockpit" incident happened. After much maneuvering, the U.S. pilot shot down Colonel Tomb with a sidewinder.

The Navy pilot, who was one of the early graduates of the Navy's TOPGUN school that taught dogfighting techniques to F-4 Phantom pilots, received the Navy Cross once, the Silver Star twice, the Air Medal 15 times, and the Purple Heart for wounds he received under enemy fire. In other words he was a true war hero.

After his stint in Vietnam he went on to become an instructor at the TOPGUN school as well as a commentator for the History Channel, NOVA and became nationally known as a CNN commentator on naval aircraft in the run-up to the Persian Gulf War. He eventually parlayed his war hero status and visibility as a CNN commentator into a seat in Congress as Republican representative for California's 44th district.

His name is Duke Cunningham and he now resides in federal prison for tax evasion, conspiracy to commit bribery, mail fraud, and wire fraud while serving in Congress.

This is relevant because we now have a candidate for president who is relying on his status as a POW to warrant his becoming president. John McCain touts his POW status during Vietnam on an almost daily basis as a legitimate reason to vote for him. By doing so, he has created the necessity to examine the premise upon which he asks for our votes.

Does a good soldier necessarily make for a good politician or a legitimate reason to vote for him for president?

The corporate media has assiduously avoided investigating McCain's tenure in the military before, during or after his imprisonment at the Hanoi Hilton. So we will have to defer to McCain's peers for that information. Who better to know about McCain's imprisonment than those who were there with him.

Phillip Butler was a POW at the Hanoi Hilton 2 1/2 years before McCain arrived and he has recently written an article as to why he will not vote for McCain. He also lived across the hall with McCain at the Naval Academy in 1957-58 so he knew McCain both before and during their stay at the Hanoi Hilton. Butler, while not minimizing McCain's service, lays to rest the notion being promoted by McCain that his service might translate to him being a good president. His article is indicative of other articles being written by those who served with McCain in the military as well as his fellow legislators on both sides of the aisle.

However from simply listening to McCain, it becomes evident that being a POW does not qualify him to be president as he would have us believe.

Being a POW does not help his self admitted computer illiteracy in our increasingly computerized culture. It has not helped him connect with ordinary Americans who are losing their homes in the millions while he can't remember how many houses he owns (7-10 by last count). It does not help when he thinks the definition of middle class is anyone making less than 5 million dollars. It does not help when he doesn't know the difference between Sunni and Shia. It does not help when he claims that the "Surge" worked while admitting that he doesn't know when the Surge began, how many troops were involved, where it was focused nor why our troops can't come home now that the surge "worked". It does not help when after 8 years of watching George Bush run this nation into the ground he proposes more of the same if not worse.

In other words given his disconnect with the American people as well as our culture, he's going to have to offer more than the time he spent as a POW 40 years ago to be a credible candidate. To date he has offered little else to recommend him for president.

Being a good soldier does not necessarily translate to being a good politician nor by extension, a good president.

Just ask Duke Cunningham.

Craig