Thread

I’ve never told this story before but I was deployed to Guantanamo Bay when McCain came down in 2013 and was asked to give him a briefing as part of his review https://twitter.com/SenJohnMcCain/status/343005311629664258

For obvious reasons I cannot dicuss the content of the briefing as it was a national security matter

But I can discuss McCain’s demeanor

He constantly interrupted everyone in the meeting with questions that had nothing to do with what we were talking about

Which was an active threat to national security

Instead he acted like he wasn’t paying attention and started firing off random questions

At one point he accused me of violating the rights of the detainees for not allowing them to stand trial

Mind you I was an E5 at the time

I had nothing to do with that

The JAG saved me

Then instead of asking any follow-ups, he decided to berate the Admiral and Captain in the room (CO of JTF-GTMO and the J2)

He started raising his voice at them, insulting them personally, and kept reminding them they “hadn’t served like he served”

All of this was unprompted

His rant went on nearly 10 mins long

All whole I was at modified parade rest in the front of the brief not knowing what the frak was going on

In the end, Feinstein and McDonough calmed him down and they ended up being very polite. I sat down at the end

After all his screaming, and cursing, the delegation left the room and we all looked at each other not really sure just what had happened

He got home and his staff issued a prewritten press release that had nothing to do with anything discussed or that took place on the trip

I’m told he was like that to just about everyone in private

He didn’t care about us, he cared about John McCain

He went on to serve in the US Senate another 5 years

I’m glad I voted for my own dad in 2008

/End