.... or even Jim Webb.
My wife and I are traveling to Vietnam shortly. She booked a hotel and put the deposit payment on our credit card. Today I checked the credit card statement on line. One item read:
Date: 11/27/2006, Vendor: Hanoi Hilton, Vietnam
(Note for anyone under age 30: The "Hanoi Hilton" was the grim nickname for the prison where McCain and other American POWs were held and tortured during the Vietnam war.)
Actually, I imagine that McCain might see this as some sort of coming-full-circle vindication. Vietnam is so thoroughly integrated into the Western/Asian complex of trade, manufacturing, and tourism, and memories of the "American war" years are so distant and dim there, that a "Hanoi Hilton" is as natural as, say, the Amway outlet in Beijing. (Yes, Vietnam is also like some other much larger Asian countries we could mention in being economically integrated yet politically very controlled and constrained.)
Or maybe the opposite is true, and the Vietnamese are making a grim joke they know will jolt Americans of a certain age. But I don't think so. I bet they're oblivious. It's all business these days.
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