Subject: JOHN MCCAIN'S REMARKS ABOUT THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
THE NEXT TIME YOU SAY IT THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE IT WILL BE
SAID WITH A TEAR IN YOUR EYE
IN light of the recent appeals court ruling in California, with respect to the
Pledge of Allegiance, the following recollection from Senator John McCain in
very appropriate:
"The Pledge of Allegiance" - by Senator John McCain
As you may know, I spent five and one half years as a prisoner of war during the
Vietnam War. In the early years of our imprisonment, the NVA kept us in
solitary confinement or two or three to a cell. In 1971 the NVA moved us from
these conditions of isolation into large rooms with as many as 30 to 40 men
to a room. This was, as you can imagine, a wonderful change and was a direct
result of the efforts of millions of Americans on behalf of a few hundred POWs
10,000 miles from home. One of the men who moved into my room was a young
man named Mike Christian. Mike came from a small town near Selma, Alabama. He
didn't wear a pair of shoes until he was 13 years old. At 17, he enlisted in the US Navy.
He later earned a commission by going to Officer Training School Then he became a
Naval Flight Officer and was shot down and captured in 1967. Mike had a keen and deep appreciation of the opportunities this country and our military provide for people who want
to work and want to succeed. As part of the change in treatment, the Vietnamese allowed
some prisoners to receive packages from home. In some of these packages were handkerchiefs, scarves and other items of clothing. Mike got himself a bamboo needle.
Over a period of a couple of months, he created an American flag and sewed on the
inside of his shirt. Every afternoon, before we had a bowl of soup, we would hang Mike's
shirt on the wall of the cell and say the Pledge of Allegiance. I know the Pledge of
Allegiance may not seem the most important part of our day now, but I can assure you
that in that stark cell it was indeed the most important and meaningful event.
One day the Vietnamese searched our cell, as they did periodically, and discovered Mike's
shirt with the flag sewn inside, and removed it. That evening they returned, opened the door
of the cell, and for the benefit of all of us, beat Mike Christian severely for the next couple of hours. Then, they opened the door of the cell and threw him in. We cleaned him up as well
as we could. The cell in which we lived had a concrete slab in the middle on which we slept.
A naked light bulbs hung in each corner of the room.
As I said, we tried to clean up Mike as well as we could. After the excitement died down, I
looked in the corner of the room, and sitting there beneath that dim light bulb with a piece of
red cloth, another shirt and his bamboo needle, was my friend, Mike Christian.
He was sitting there with his eyes almost shut from the beating he had received, making
another American flag. He was not making the flag because it made Mike Christian feel better.
He was making that flag because he knew how important it was to us to be able to Pledge our allegiance to our flag and country.
So the next time you say the Pledge of Allegiance, you must never forget the sacrifice and courage that thousands of Americans have made to build our nation and promote freedom
around the world. You must remember our duty, our honor, and our country
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic
for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
PASS THIS ON... And on... And on! You can even send it back to me, I don't mind, because its worth reading again
THE NEXT TIME YOU SAY IT THE PLEDGE OF
ALLEGIANCE WILL BE SAID WITH A TEAR IN YOUR EYE
This was given by Senator McCain at the 1988 Republician National Convention.
Source: TruthorFiction.com http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/m/mccain-flag.htm
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