Political Quotes

“I just want to take the floor briefly and comment on the passing of Admiral Jim Stockdale, one of the great heroes of our time. Jim Stockdale, when he passed away was a resident of San Diego, California, with his wonderful wife, Sybil. This occasion I think brought America's focus back to what Jim Stockdale accomplished and the enormity of his service to our country. I just thought it might be the right time to talk about that a little bit and about that extraordinary heroism that he demonstrated at a time when Americans had largely turned away from the operation in Vietnam. Jim Stockdale was shot down, and I know that my two colleagues, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sam Johnson), who shared a cell with Jim Stockdale in the Hanoi Hilton, and the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham) who was the most proficient Navy pilot of that period, in fact the only Navy ace in the Vietnam conflict, would want to be with me talking about Jim. But Jim Stockdale was shot down and was incarcerated in the Hanoi Hilton. At one point, the North Vietnamese wanted to use him for propaganda purposes. To keep them from being able to do that, he broke up a stool that was in his cell and beat his own face with the stool almost beyond recognition so that he had no value to the North Vietnamese in terms of being an image that they could broadcast for propaganda purposes. He was a leader in the true sense of the term.…”