When I got to the part of the letter that began “Friends,” I knew it was probably propaganda out and out. I recently received some McCain mailing that was littered with that same usage. I always hear, in my head, him saying it at the second debate when I read it. It drives me nuts.
Beyond that, I’ll also say that there are many people who have been willing to go on record that while McCain was a POW, he was also a spoiled brat when it came to his military service, something that letter specifically denies. The Rolling Stone biopiece was incredibly damning in this respect.
To quote: “Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. ‘McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man,’ Dramesi says today. ‘But he’s still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in.’”