At the presidential debate on September 26, 2008, John McCain said:
But there’s also the issue of responsibility. You’ve mentioned President Dwight David Eisenhower. President Eisenhower, on the night before the Normandy invasion, went into his room, and he wrote out two letters.
One of them was a letter congratulating the great members of the military and allies that had conducted and succeeded in the greatest invasion in history, still to this day, and forever.
And he wrote out another letter, and that was a letter of resignation from the United States Army for the failure of the landings at Normandy.
According to the National Archives, Eisenhower wrote only one letter, which they possess the original copy of. According to the original copy, it reads:
Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.
While General Eisenhower did pen a letter accepting responsibility, he never penned a letter of resignation, and there is no record of a second letter of congratulations written on the same day. McCain lied when he said otherwise.
Tags: McCain
October 8th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
What a bold lie! You hear something like that and you thing it must be true cause you can’t (or wouldn’t dare) make that stuff up. Well, I guess McCain’t Can!
October 15th, 2008 at 4:57 am
It is simply a leap in logic to assume this is a bold faced lie. Simply because the letter is not on record or is not preserved does not mean that both of the letters were penned. I’m not saying they were but simply call someone a liar becuase we don’t have a letter from 50 years ago is a bit much. Mccain probably shouldn’t have said it but that doesn’t make it simply a lie.