The only thing similar about the two stories is that they both involve prisoners and they both involve someone drawing a cross in the dirt.

Drawing symbols on the ground as a way of silent communication between Christians supposedly goes back almost 2000 years - Christians claim this is the origin of the "fish" symbol so common on people's bumpers these days.

Andrew Sullivan is grasping at straws - and so are you.

McCain also admits reading the book and has praised it in public. What a crock.

Ben Smith August 18, 2008
www.politico.com/blogs/ben...story.html

Responding to DailyKos diarists and to Andrew Sullivan, the McCain campaign has a statement from fellow prisoner of war Orson Swindle, who says he first heard a story of a sympathetic guard's drawing a cross in the dirt from McCain himself in 1971.

Skeptics noted that the earliest easily found version of that story comes in McCain's co-written 1999 memoir, and that it echoes a story attributed to the Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It's also a very old Christian theme, going back to the earliest Christians making an outline of a fish in the dirt.

From McCain aide Michael Goldfarb's blog:

"Swindle, who was held as a prisoner of war along with McCain, tells the McCain Report that he heard this particular story from McCain 'when we first moved in together.' That was in the summer of 1971, Swindle said, though 'time blurred' and he couldn't be sure."

Goldfarb goes on to go after Obama's supporters for questioning McCain's war record -- a subject they'd gladly talk about all day:

"It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others."

In general, the assertion that information from the pre-Internet age is mysteriously absent is something to be handled with care. There's a lot less to search through from the far-off 1980s and 1990s. Granting the difference between absence of evidence and evidence of absence, though, the easiest way to knock this down would be with an instance of McCain mentioning it between his captivity and 1999.

yup.

And he made no more sense than one too.

Conservative Pundit Andrew Sulivan jumps in:

andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/th...tml

And it would not be salient if McCain hadn't deployed the anecdote in his own words - with a misleading image - in a campaign ad, and used it again in front of an evangelical audience Saturday night. And it would not be salient if religious fanatics had not a strangle-hold on the Republican party, seeking doctrinal assurances and echoes of their own type of faith in political candidates.

Here are the perfectly legitimate questions reporters should now, in my opinion, ask McCain:

why did you not mention this transcendent story in 1973? Why, in discussing three Christmases in captivity in Vietnam, was this story - far more powerful than any of the other anecdotes - omitted? How was it possible for the gun guard of May 1969 to be present at Christmas that year when McCain had been transferred to another camp? Is it possible that McCain's memory has faded with time and that he has simply fused his own memories with other stories - as Clinton did with Bosnia sniper fire and as Kerry did in remembering another Christmas he could not have actually witnessed where he said he did?

And why are we not allowed to ask these questions, when they relate to one of the most important questions anyone can ask about a president: the question of integrity? If McCain has fabricated a religious epiphany for political purposes, it is about as deep a betrayal of core integrity as one can imagine, and the latest example of how pernicious the religious domination of political life in America has become.