Why Vietnam Loves Mccain

Newsweek, July, 2008 by Ron Moreau

They jailed him for five years. Now they want him in the White House.

John McCain might not recognize Nguyen van Sy, but they used to be neighbors. Back in the 1960s, Sy was left behind as caretaker at the North Vietnamese Ministry of Culture’s Film Institute after its staff was evacuated to the countryside to escape the U.S. bombing. The Hanoi regime converted part of the abandoned facility into a POW camp—“the Plantation,” inmates called it—and the 31-year-old Navy pilot was taken there a few weeks after he was shot down over Hanoi in October 1967. Sometimes Sy climbed a tree for a peek at the prisoners. At night the caretaker huddled by the camp’s wall while the city was being pounded: the Americans would never target their own men, he figured. Four decades later, Sy...

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