At Fort McNair, an army base located along the Potomac River in the nation’s capital, a chance reunion takes place one day between two former POWs. It’s the spring of 1974, and Navy commander John Sidney McCain III has returned home from the experience in Hanoi that, according to legend, transformed him from a callow and reckless youth into a serious man of patriotism and purpose. Walking along the grounds at Fort McNair, McCain runs into John Dramesi, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who was also imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam.

McCain is studying at the National War College, a prestigious graduate program he had to pull strings with the Secretary of the Navy to get into. Dramesi is enrolled, on his own merit, at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in the building next door.

There’s a distance between the two men that belies their shared experience in North Vietnam — call it an honor gap. Like many American POWs, McCain broke down under torture and offered a “confession” to his North Vietnamese captors. Dramesi, in contrast, attempted two daring escapes. For the second he was brutalized for a month with daily torture sessions that nearly killed him. His partner in the escape, Lt. Col. Ed Atterberry, didn’t survive the mistreatment. But Dramesi never said a disloyal word, and for his heroism was awarded two Air Force Crosses, one of the service’s highest distinctions. McCain would later hail him as “one of the toughest guys I’ve ever met.”

On the grounds between the two brick colleges, the chitchat between the scion of four-star admirals and the son of a prizefighter turns to their academic travels; both colleges sponsor a trip abroad for young officers to network with military and political leaders in a distant corner of the globe.

“I’m going to the Middle East,” Dramesi says. “Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran.”

“Why are you going to the Middle East?” McCain asks, dismissively.

“It’s a place we’re probably going to have some problems,” Dramesi says.

“Why? Where are you going to, John?”

“Oh, I’m going to Rio.”

“What the hell are you going to Rio for?”

McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.

“I got a better chance of getting laid.”

Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. “McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man,” Dramesi says today. “But he’s still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in.”

When you were born, you cried,
and the world rejoiced.
Live your life
so that when you die,
the world cries and you rejoice.

I’m in the hospital. The doctor says it wont be much longer now. Tristan will be born shortly. It’s been a strange week, one that has seen the death of my mother and now, the dawn brings the birth of my son. I’ve got to go, now,

Cry, rejoice, Repeat.

UAW head chides McCain for Prius ‘flip-flop’

LANSING, Mich. (AP) - The head of the United Auto Workers union says Republican presidential nominee John McCain lost credibility by first saying he bought his daughter a Toyota Prius, then saying she bought it.

Ron Gettelfinger told reporters Wednesday in a conference call that motorists have a right to choose any car they want. He added that McCain should be honest about who bought the Prius.

McCain last year told a student in South Carolina that he bought the car.

But when questioned Sunday by TV station WXYZ in Southfield, Mich., McCain said, “She bought it, I believe, herself.”

The UAW has endorsed McCain’s Democratic opponent, Barack Obama.

Gustav continued to gain strength after becoming a hurricane early Tuesday and forecasters said it could become a Category 2 hurricane before hitting Haiti’s southern coast.

The fast-forming storm was also on track to hit Cuba.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said the hurricane’s maximum sustained winds were near 90 mph with higher gusts.

Haitians were told to prepare for evacuations as the storm formed Monday in the Caribbean. Haiti upgraded storm warnings to hurricane warnings along much of its coast as Gustav closed in from the south. A warning means hurricane conditions are expected within 24 hours.
Forecasters said storm preparations in Haiti should be rushed to completion and that floods and landslides were possible across its southern peninsula. The forecasts suggested Gustav’s eye could pass near the capital of Port-au-Prince, home to nearly 3 million people.