I refer to the Malaysiakini article Landslide .

I am appalled by (Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy) Professor Emeritus W Scott Thompson’s attack on John McCain in the above article.

While I share Professor Thompson's preference for Barack Obama as the future US president, his under-the-belt criticism of McCain has been most deplorable and smacked of the grubby style of the Swift Boats Veterans for Truth.

Thompson should be ashamed of himself for writing sneeringly of McCain as ‘a 'national hero' who supposedly had earned the presidency for five years of squatting in a Vietnamese jail (heroism defined as endurance rather than courageous choice).

If McCain was a war hero, it would not be because he was a POW, though he demonstrated his discipline and inner strength as a naval officer during his wartime incarceration. It would have to be his unstinting service to his country as a naval pilot who was prepared to conduct air operations 23 times (before being shot down) over North Vietnam, at that time one of the most heavily defended airspaces in the world.

McCain was and is unlike President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, two of the most belligerent American leaders ever seen, but who both successfully avoided the Vietnam War.

We also need to note also that McCain refused a North Vietnamese offer of early release in 1968, because it would mean him leaving before other prisoners who had been held longer.

Such had been his sense of honour, sense of fairness and duty to his comrades that he was prepared to remain in the horrible POW camp for another five years before he was released in 1973 after the Paris Peace Accords.

But regardless of whether one wishes to remember McCain's duty to his country in war or his courageous endurance in the infamous 'Hanoi Hilton', Professor Thompson should hang his head in shame for employing the politically-motivated dismissive word 'supposedly', and for attempting to diminish McCain's war service by a pathetic hair-splitting re-definition of the 'heroism' attributed to the Republican presidential candidate.

Then he contrasted McCain's Annapolis achievements (the US naval academy) against Obama's Harvard background. To borrow a leaf out of Thompson's book, that's like comparing the finest tempered steel against a fluffy quill.

But to be fair to Obama in the steel versus quill model, can there be a comparison between two vastly different items, each of relevant use in specific scenarios. Yes, it's like saying apples are superior to oranges!

One must remember that Republican John McCain defended Democrat John Kerry during the Swift Boats Veterans for Truth (SBVT) smear campaign through advertisements against the Democrat presidential candidate. McCain stated: ‘I condemn the (SBVT) ad. It is dishonest and dishonorable. I think it is very, very wrong.’

Recently, McCain defended his presidential candidate rival Obama when a white Republican supporter alluded to the alleged Obama's questionable foreign allegiance. McCain chopped that bigoted suggestion down and spoke of Obama as a decent American citizen.

Professor Thompson should take note that while McCain might not have run the Harvard Law Review , he has time and time again demonstrated the finest example of his Annapolis training, that of honour (decency) and duty.