“Many families could not and should not have been expected to abandon hope that their sons, husbands, and brothers who had disappeared in the jungles of Vietnam might yet be returned to them. And many good people, who shared their hope and had come to their assistance, were motivated by the most admirable of intentions, to keep faith with Americans who had done all that duty asked of them. But these good intentions and understandable emotions also drew the attention of people with less honorable purposes. There came to exist in America, and elsewhere in the years that followed the Vietnam War, a small cottage industry made up of swindlers, dime-store Rambos, and just plain old conspiracy nuts who preyed on the emotions of the families and on the attention of officials who were dedicated to the search for our missing. They had helped convince many of the families and a few members of Congress that the US. government had knowingly abandoned American servicemen in Vietnam and that five successive presidential administrations had covered up the crime. It was among the most damaging and most hurtful of all the lies about the Vietnam War that I ever encountered.”

—  John McCain

Source: 2000s, 2002, Worth the Fighting For (2002), pp. 235 - 236

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Many families could not and should not have been expected to abandon hope that their sons, husbands, and brothers who h…" by John McCain?
John McCain photo
John McCain 169
politician from the United States 1936–2018

Related quotes

Markus Zusak photo

“I don’t think too many people had what I had, a husband who believed in me and who wanted to help me.”

Joan Micklin Silver (1935–2020) American film director

discussing the support and encouragement she received at the start of her film career
Filmmaker Magazine - Article & Interview by Vadim Rizov - “Women Directors are One More Problem We Don’t Need”: Joan Micklin Silver on Chilly Scenes of Winter https://filmmakermagazine.com/88270-women-directors-are-one-more-problem-we-dont-need-joan-micklin-silver-on-chilly-scenes-of-winter/#.X_JSlC9h3Up - 11 November 2014 - Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20210911141834/https://filmmakermagazine.com/88270-women-directors-are-one-more-problem-we-dont-need-joan-micklin-silver-on-chilly-scenes-of-winter/

Jane Goodall photo
Paul Simonon photo
T.S. Eliot photo
Dany Laferrière photo

“They were human beings who had a life, who had a lineage, who had parents, who had children, who had lives. They were not poor or rich. They were people and these people had humanity. So it was important that someone who knew them write about the event…”

Dany Laferrière (1953) Haitian Canadian novelist and journalist

On reporting about the 2010 earthquake in Haiti in “An Interview with Dany Laferrière” https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/an-interview-with-dany-laferriere-jessie-chaffee (WWB Daily, 2016)

Jonathan Safran Foer photo

“Because sometimes people who seem good
end up being not as good as you might have hoped.”

Variant: Sometimes people who seem good end up being not as good as you might have hoped, you know?
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Mikhail Gorbachev photo

Related topics