Manchurian Candidates: Fact or Fiction?

[W3pcq]

My friend keeps ranting about how he thinks McCain is a manchurian candidate because he was captured by the commies for seven years. He says that at the time he was captured that communist brainwashing and mind control experiments were being done on POW's with a main goal of creating manchurian candidates. He says that they had him for seven years and that if it was possible to create a manchurian candidate that he would likely be one.

I personally think that while brainwashing in mild forms is possible I remain skeptical about manchurian candidates. He says crazy stuff like "he probably has a computer in his implanted in his head.

I did notice that he has a funny habit of repeating words and phrases in a weird way.

Wouldn't the military have a way to test returned POW's and determine if they have been "programmed" etc.

Could someone separate the Science Fiction here from the Science Fact?

 

[EnumaElish]

The book & the films were about the Korean War. McCain did not fight in that war.

 

[W3pcq]

The books and movies were inspired by the discovery of Soviet, Chinese, and korean methods of brainwashing which was used on POWs. The russians and the chinese were involved in Vietnam as well. The Vietnam war was after the Korean war which just means more time to advance techniques. The war was ultimately between communism and capitalism and was sponsored by China and Russia.

I wouldn't doubt for a second that POWs in vietnam as valuable as a 4 star generals son would be a great person to brainwash.

I still don't believe the whole manchurian candidate thing because I think that the level of control you would need on them is too great. Sure they could probably be successful in brainwashing to some extent, but to gain enough precise control for a manchurian candidate seems impossible.e

 

[binzing]

I thought "brainwashing" was really more of just morale degradation, not actual "control" or anything like that.

 

[Poop-Loops]

What's McCain going to do? Start a pointless war? Ruin the economy? Start spying on his own people? It doesn't take an ex-POW to do that.

 

[binzing]

Bush has already accomplished that for him, so he'd actually have to work to make it worse.

 

[W3pcq]

I think that the stage is already set for it to get worse even if he doesn't work at it, and the fact is that things can always get worse and we are near the top of the how good it gets ladder.

 

[W3pcq]

I thought "brainwashing" was really more of just morale degradation, not actual "control" or anything like that.

Don't you see the sponsors above?

 

[lisab]

Don't you see the sponsors above?

Aren't those just SO funny sometimes?

 

[binzing]

You mean the banner ads? Thats modern-day marketing! Unfortunately, AdBlock, doesn't get those ones.