> Carol McCain -- the first Mrs. John McCain

[babylonsister]

Turnabout is fair play, so they say. E-mail I just received...


> Carol McCain -- the first Mrs. John McCain
>
>
> 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.
>
> 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 (while McCain
> was a POW). 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. Today, she stands at just 5' 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, 1 8 years his junior and the heir to an Arizona brewing
> fortune, just one month later.
>
> My marriage ended because John McCain didn't want to be 40, he wanted to be
> 25. You know that happens...it just does.'
>
> In 1979 - while still married to Carol - he met Cindy at a cocktail party in
> Hawaii. Over the next six months he purs ued her, flying around the country
> to see her. Then he began to push to end his mar riage. 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.
>
> 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."
>
> McCain is the classic opportunist. He's always reaching for attention and
> glory,' he said. 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.'
>
> Ross Perot, a billionaire Texas businessman, and a former presidential
> candidate, 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.
>
> --

[speedoo]

1. I'd be very interested in hearing Ross Perot talk about McCain.

Ted Sampley, not so much.

[Window]

2. K/R.

:kick: