WaPo: Official Memory Hole For The 2008 McCain Campaign

By: kirk murphy
from Firedoglake
Saturday May 24

McCain isn't the only Beltway regular with memory lapses. Yesterday the WaPo showed the same problem in writing about his apparent psychiatric symptoms. Something in D.C.'s water -- or is there something in the rarified air the Villagers share?

The WaPo article assured readers that John McCain's years of imprisonment as a POW during the Vietnam War had not left him with"POW aftereffects."

Of course, I hope that no one has "POW aftereffects." As a physician and psychiatrist with a fellowship in trauma psychiatry I also know that people subjected to torture during confinement -- whether in Hanoi or Gitmo -- are at greater than average risk of PTSD symptoms from what they have endured.

I also know that the Washington Post and other media outlets have described Senator McCain displaying behaviors that appear to satisfy two of three criteria for the responses to trauma required to diagnose PTSD:

B. The traumatic event is persistently reexperienced in one (or more) of the following ways:

(1) recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event, including images, thoughts, or perceptions.

(Continued here.)