# Did McCain make up the "cross in the dirt" POW story? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 18, 2008, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455 "2008-08-18T18:27:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2008, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455/81 "2008-08-20T15:19:54Z")
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic] Oh, bullshit. All I did was observe that he can’t keep his stories straight. [/QUOTE] You mean like John Kerry’s ‘Christmas in Cambodia’? The nonexistent event that was ‘seared’ into his memory? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2008, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455/82 "2008-08-20T15:45:19Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] You mean like John Kerry’s ‘Christmas in Cambodia’? The nonexistent event that was ‘seared’ into his memory? [/QUOTE] Exactly like that. Funny how you guys have different standards for McCain. ETA, I think Kerry just conflated Christmas with Tet in his memory. He said he rememnered fireworks. That’s Tet, not Christmas. An easy mistake to make 30 years later. Still a much more plausible story than that stupid cross glurge. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Dave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/46a35a/32.png) [@Great\_Dave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Dave)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2008, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455/83 "2008-08-20T15:56:07Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] You mean like John Kerry’s ‘Christmas in Cambodia’? The nonexistent event that was ‘seared’ into his memory? [/QUOTE] What the hell does Kerry have to do with McCain’s possible goof? ---
**Author:** ![stolichnaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bcef8e/32.png) [@stolichnaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stolichnaya)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2008, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455/84 "2008-08-20T16:15:51Z")
Exactly. This should be about _Clinton_. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2008, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455/85 "2008-08-20T16:38:16Z")
[QUOTE=Mr. Moto] What is it with you and gladiator flicks? 😉 [/QUOTE] Something a pilot introduced me to once. Kept calling me Billy for some reason. Gore Vidal wrote an essay about the high degree of S&M in biblical epics- even those like _Ben Hur_ and _Barabbas_ that weren’t drawing from actual biblical stories, or parts of _The Ten Commandments_ that weren’t in the Bible (e.g. Vincent Price and his whip, or bringing Heston manacled in a loin cloth before Pharaoh). Per him it was a conscious decision of the movie makers to get more bucks from the “we hate sex and violence in movies” crowd, who went ape for the same scenes if they came with a Bible story. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455/86 "2008-08-21T03:45:19Z")
Just to recap, this whole thing started from a post on [Daily Kos](http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/17/122230/161/239/569299), linked in the OP. Well, it turns out the author of that piece didn’t even bother to read the Gulag Archipelago before posting his claim, because the passage about the cross in the sand is not in it. According to [Solzhenitsyn’s biographer](http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/solzhenitsyn_biographer_crossi.php), this story does not appear in _The Gulag Archipelago_, nor does it appear in any of Solzhenitsyn’s other written works. And it didn’t even happen to Solzhenitsyn. So, let’s recap what the claim devolves into - that McCain, who no one disputes suffered hellish tortures in Vietnam, made up a story about a guard drawing a cross in the dirt. We know this because… Well, because we’re pretty sure that Alexandr Solzhenitsyn wrote it first. No wait, he didn’t. But someone might have told it to him, and McCain might have heard it from the guy who told it to him. Or something. The story was mentioned in a sermon in 1997, attributed to Solzhenitsyn. But the attribution is wrong, so we don’t know where the story came from. But we’re pretty sure McCain copied it from someone. Because there’s no way in hell that a closet Christian in a communist country would ever make a sign of the cross in the dirt in sympathy with another captive Christian. Since this is devolving into a ‘friend of a friend knew a guy who was in a prison camp and had a guard draw a cross in the sand’ kind of story, does it occur to anyone that the orignal source might have been McCain himself? This story was floating around right-wing circles for years, apparently, and repeated by people who knew McCain. It seems just as plausible that McCain mentioned it to someone at a cocktail party or a dinner somewhere, and the story spread and wound up attributed to Solzhenitsyn. It also seems to me that it’s possible that drawing a cross in the dirt is not exactly uncommon in countries where Christianity is persecuted, and could easily have happened to more than one person. It’s a universal symbol between people who do not speak the same language, it can be quickly erased, or drawn in a way that no one would recognize it unless they looked closely. I wouldn’t be surprised if persecuted Christians had been identifying themselves to each other like this for a thousand years. This has to be the lamest ‘Swiftboating’ ever. ---
**Author:** ![stolichnaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bcef8e/32.png) [@stolichnaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stolichnaya)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455/87 "2008-08-21T03:48:53Z")
Aside perhaps from the eponymous one. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455/88 "2008-08-21T04:00:37Z")
Ok, so according to your cite, it’s a story told _about_ Solzhenitsyn in a book by Chuck Colson and repeated by Billy Graham among others. From your link: > [@](#): > > Of course, it’s still possible that McCain or Salter picked this up from the sort of right-wing circles that it first originated in. After all, this tale was bandied about by Chuck Colson and many other wingnuts for years; McCain or Salter could have picked it up from such circles, as the notes from Colson’s 1983 book, Loving God, explain: > > ``` > "The story about Alexander Solzhenitsen and the old man who made the sign of the cross was first told by Solzhenitsyn to a group of Christian leaders and later recounted by Billy Graham in his New Year's telecast, 1977. It has been retold subsequently, most publicly by Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC)." > > ``` > > Those investigating this story have also pointed out that no one can find evidence that McCain referenced this episode until his 1999 book – it didn’t appear anywhere in a lengthy 1973 article McCain wrote about his captivity. It does seem odd that McCain would not have discussed such a pivotal moment until twenty-five years later. > > One key source being cited on the internets right now for the story that this supposedly happened to Solzhenitsyn is this sermon by Luke Veronis, an American priest who preached it in Albania in March of 1997. It was reprinted in a journal called In communion. > > In the sermon Veronis described Solzhenitsyn as having toiled in the “fields” of Siberia. A “skinny old prisoner” silently “drew a stick through the ground at Solzhenitsyn’s feet, tracing the sign of the Cross,” Veronis says. So it was a well worn piece of right wing glurge that was active long before McCain lifted it. So he didn’t get it from _Gulag Archipelago_. That’s not really relevant. The point remains that the story is not original to John McCain. This information debunks nothing. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455/89 "2008-08-21T04:09:15Z")
Unless of course, it WAS original to McCain, and he’s the source of the story. As you say, it was repeated in right-wing circles. Why couldn’t it have been McCain’s story all along? We have an eyewitness who says McCain told him the story in 1971 - said eyewitness also being one of those people in ‘right wing circles’. And why couldn’t the story have happened to more than one person? For all you know, drawing a cross in the dirt with a stick might be a very common impulse of closet Christians in backwards countries. If a guard was a Christian, and wanted to let a Christian prisoner know that he sympathized with him, wouldn’t making the sign of a cross on the ground be a pretty natural way to do it? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455/90 "2008-08-21T04:17:22Z")
Is there an actual discussion, here? Or are we simply looking at one more interminable “_Is too_” “_Is not_” shouting match that probably has no bearing on the real world, regardless of its level of accuracy? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455/91 "2008-08-21T04:17:48Z")
Those dudes vouching for McCain never spoke about this before like two days ago and they’re not reliable witnesses, and I mean that in a good way. They’re his old cellmates. They’re going to get his back no matter what. Using those guys as cites is like using his mother. If had ever told it before he ran for President, and hadn’t changed details, and hadn’t changed details of other stories, and if it hadn’t already been a trite piece of glurge, I might believe it. I still think it’s _possible_ it’s true, but I also think there’s more than enough reason to raise an eyebrow about it. I don’t think it has the slightest relevance to the election, though. All vets embellish their war stories. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455/92 "2008-08-21T05:12:56Z")
Actually, it sounds like we’re pretty close to the same position on this. It does seem fairly reasonable to believe that McCain probably appropriated the story as his own. Just like Hillary’s running from the helicopter under fire. But it’s also possible that it’s not, and that this really happened to him. Either way, it’s not that big a deal unless McCain turns it into one. Kerry’s problem wasn’t just that he told a fish tale - it was that he used it in testimony, that he repeated it to bolster his arguments in his book, etc. He made it a major part of his war biography, and kept digging himself deeper holes with it. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455/93 "2008-08-21T05:18:12Z")
Here we go. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![9thFloor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/9/b487fb/32.png) [@9thFloor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/9thFloor)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455/94 "2008-08-21T05:53:41Z")
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic] How about the fact that he’s changed details, and that he never told the story at all until 1999? [/QUOTE] How about the fact that Obama has changed details on his uncle liberating Jews? Or that Ayers wasn’t ‘merely’ a neighbor with whom the entire extent of his relationship was merely that geographic coincidence? Or that Rezko wasn’t merely ‘some guy’ that he worked for through a church charity but actually a substantial political backer? Etc., etc., etc. and on and on? If you’re going to pick apart details of a story like that of McCain’s for which you have no evidence at all but crap like the above – as if, as someone noted, the idea of a cross in the sand is somehow the type of thing that would need to be lifted from someone’s frickin’ autobio and wasn’t utterly common as an idea forever – then you can damn well pick apart The Magic Negro’s magical uncle. LOL ---
**Author:** ![bdgr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a87d85/32.png) [@bdgr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bdgr)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455/95 "2008-08-21T05:56:10Z")
> [@](#): > > The Magic Negro’s magical uncle. LOL wow ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455/96 "2008-08-21T06:07:26Z")
[QUOTE=9thFloor] How about the fact that Obama has changed details on his uncle liberating Jews? [/quote] No he hasn’t. That story has been verified. He just got the name of the camp wrong, which is wont to happen with family stories. But you knew that didn’t you. > [@](#): > > Or that Ayers wasn’t ‘merely’ a neighbor with whom the entire extent of his relationship was merely that geographic coincidence? Um…yeah, that pretty much IS all there is too it. > [@](#): > > Or that Rezko wasn’t merely ‘some guy’ that he worked for through a church charity but actually a substantial political backer? Etc., etc., etc. and on and on? You basically believe every single thing you hear on Hannity and Colmes, don’t you. Obama never worked for Rezko. He worked for a law firm that did some charity legal work for a property owned by Rezko (Obama did about 6 hours of legal work on a property being rehabbed for charity). Rezko also raised a few thousands dollars for him early in his political career. So what? There’s no law against that, and there’s never been any allegation, much less evidence that Obama ever did anything illegal or unethical. > [@](#): > > If you’re going to pick apart details of a story like that of McCain’s for which you have no evidence at all but crap like the above – as if, as someone noted, the idea of a cross in the sand is somehow the type of thing that would need to be lifted from someone’s frickin’ autobio and wasn’t utterly common as an idea forever – then you can damn well pick apart The Magic Negro’s magical uncle. LOL Except that you really can’t pick apart Obama, can you? Everything he says checks out. You can’t point to one thing he changed or invented. And “magic negro?” You’re not even pretending anymore, are you? Why don’t you just call him what you really want to call him. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455/97 "2008-08-21T06:15:40Z")
What I don’t get is, even if the story is true, how does it in any way make McCain a better guy? Or is his former kind hearted VietCong guard running for some elected position and this is McCain’s endorsement? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455/98 "2008-08-21T06:43:01Z")
[QUOTE=don’t ask] What I don’t get is, even if the story is true, how does it in any way make McCain a better guy? Or is his former kind hearted VietCong guard running for some elected position and this is McCain’s endorsement? [/QUOTE] It’s supposed to prove he really means it when he says he’s a devoted Christian and not just spouting platitudes to get elected. It’s all about reassuring his evangelical base. I suspect the truth is that he’s really a pretty apathetic Christian, but if you’re a Republican, you have to tell the evangelicals that you eat sleep and shit Jesus 24/7. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455/99 "2008-08-21T08:42:22Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] Since this is devolving into a ‘friend of a friend knew a guy who was in a prison camp and had a guard draw a cross in the sand’ kind of story, does it occur to anyone that the orignal source might have been McCain himself? This story was floating around right-wing circles for years, apparently, and repeated by people who knew McCain. [/QUOTE] [http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles\_of\_faith/2008/08/mccains\_vietnam.html](http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles_of_faith/2008/08/mccains_vietnam.html) > [@](#): > > Talking Points Memo finds a Solzhenitsyn scholar who has actually read “The Gulag Archipelago” and says Solzhenitsyn never told the cross story. But, whether or not Solzhenitsyn ever said it, it was subsequently attributed to him by evangelicals, including Chuck Colson. [Chuck Colson](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Colson) > [@](#): > > In 1968, Colson served as counsel to presidential candidate Nixon’s Key Issues Committee. > … > Colson’s voice, archives from April 1969, was heard in the 2004 movie Going Upriver deprecating the anti-war efforts of John Kerry. Colson’s orders were to “Destroy the young demagogue before he becomes another Ralph Nader.”[8][9] In a phone conversation with President Nixon on April 28, 1971, Colson said, “This fellow Kerry that they had on last week…He turns out to be really quite a phony.” ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2008, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455/100 "2008-08-21T18:33:10Z")
Looks like there’s another religious McCain story that’s [not true](http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/08/another-mccain.html) (this one having to do with Mother Theresa and one of the girls they adopted): > [@](#): > > This is the pattern: > > A story that shows the McCains’ genuine compassion and faith is embellished over the years to make the story a little more perfect, a little more salient, a little better as a narrative. It’s especially important to add these embellishments when your goal is to appeal to a fundamentalist base, when your own prickly, personal and private faith isn’t very marketable. And when your adopted daughter is Bangladeshi, and when that fact has been disgracefully used against you by the Bush machine in 2000, and when some fringes of your base get queasy about multi-racial families, what better way to describe the adoption than as something Mother Teresa herself “implored” you to do? More interesting: the first actual reports of this event do not mention this fact. They are added later. > > I note that this false story was on the McCain website and has since been corrected. Now, the question is whether and when Cindy McCain met with Mother Teresa: > > > [@](#): > > > > A McCain source acknowledged that Cindy McCain did not meet Mother Teresa during the 1991 trip to Bangladesh but said McCain did meet her later on, although the source could not say when or where. The campaign has since reworded the reference to the adoption on its website. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-mccain-make-up-the-cross-in-the-dirt-pow-story/460455.md?page=6)