Time for a little "Straight Talk" from Senator McCain about the Jimmy McCain satellite image  

By Ted Sampley
U.S. Veteran Dispatch
January 12, 2008

When I read this week in the online Cedar Rapids Gazette that Senator John McCain had on the campaign trail in Iowa raised the issue of the deployment of his son, Marine Corporal Jimmy McCain, to Iraq, I realized it's time for some "straight talk" from the Senator about 2 spy satellite images.

Senator McCain, with the critically important South Carolina Primary only days away, I ask you this hypothetical question: "What, if you become President, would you do if your son Jimmy was reported missing in action and you were informed that a U.S. spy satellite passing over Iraq had photographed a military distress code message in the desert that correlated to Jimmy?"

I ask this because, during your "investigation" of missing American servicemen in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in 1991-1993, you ridiculed a similar satellite photo taken in 1988 that showed what Department of Defense (DOD) experts testified was a valid, classified United States military Pilot Distress code in a dry rice paddy in Sam Neua Province, Laos.

According to DOD documents cited in the 2007 New York Times bestseller - An Enormous Crime - those DOD experts testified that each of the letters in the "USA" were 12 feet tall and together the 3 letters stretched 37 feet across the dry paddy, and the highly classified "Walking K" Escape and Evasion symbol beneath the "USA" was 24 feet tall and 19 feet across. DOD experts told you that this "USA Walking K" pilot distress code "must be considered valid until proven otherwise."

Despite the expert testimony - and the fact that roughly 90 independent intelligence sources had reported the presence of American POWs in Sam Neua Province after the Vietnam War; that a radio intercept had told of US POWs in the province; and that a different satellite photo - also taken in 1988 - had shown the name of a US pilot laid out beside a trail near where the "USA Walking K" was seen in the rice paddy - despite all that you declared at the time and later in your 2002 memoir - Worth The Fighting For - that the "USA Walking K" pilot distress code was not a plea for rescue as the DOD experts said, but instead was "a young Laotian boy's handiwork that he had copied off an envelope."

Really, really cute, Senator!

Having observed how you so callously abandoned missing American servicemen (my son's grandfather, Green Beret SFC Robert D. Owen included) to a lifetime of captivity in Southeast Asia during your 1991-1993 "investigation," I, along with many other POW/MIA family members, fear that you may similarly abandon more brave Americans if you are elected President.

So I ask you now, Senator McCain - before the election - how would you handle a similar distress code message from the Iraqi desert (especially if it pertained to Jimmy McCain)? Would you callously blow it off as nothing more than the handiwork of a young Iraqi boy who copied it off an envelope, or...?