Sen. John McCain visited the "Hanoi Hilton" prison where he was held for more than five years during the Vietnam War on Wednesday, making a few deadpan remarks as he made his way through dark corridors and past musty cells.
McCain allowed reporters to follow him while he escorted Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina through the prison.
Vietnam's communist government has turned the facility into a museum. French colonialists originally used it to hold Vietnamese revolutionaries, then the North Vietnamese used it after they took power to house Americans captured during the Vietnam War. The prison was called Hoa Lo but U.S. troops used the nickname "The Hanoi Hilton."
McCain, the prison's most famous detainee, says he and others were tortured severely during their time there.
The Vietnamese government says the Americans were treated well, and the exhibit includes a volleyball net prisoners used and pictures of them eating Christmas dinner.
"They took me to one of those dinners and I started shouting obscenities," McCain, last year's Republican nominee for president who lost to Barack Obama, told his colleagues Wednesday.
Then he looked at a photo of former prisoners pictured with letters from home. "This always entertains me," McCain said of the scene. "A wonderful life!"
The museum features a display of what is supposed to be McCain's former flight suit, but the senator said the boots didn't look like the ones he wore and his old name tag wasn't on it.
McCain made no comments to the press, and reporters could hear only bits and pieces of his conversation with Graham and Klobuchar.
While walking past a photo of Vietnam's legendary Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, he offered praise for the man who masterminded battlefield victories over the French and the Americans, both of which later withdrew their troops.
"He really was a military genius," said McCain, who made a two-day stop in Hanoi as part of a weeklong Asian tour that is also taking him to Hong Kong, Japan and China.
McCain was held as a POW for 5 1/2 years after North Vietnamese fire hit his A4 warplane during a bombing run over Hanoi. He crashed into a Hanoi lake, breaking both arms and a leg. He became entangled in his parachute, and Vietnamese civilians pulled him from the water before beating him on shore.
In 1993, the Vietnamese knocked down most of Hoa Lo and built an office and residential tower where the prison once stood. One wing remains, but McCain's old cell is no longer there.
He pointed to another tiny cell — about 6 feet by 3 feet — with nothing more than a bed frame with no mattress, just a straw mat. He told his colleagues it looked much like the one in which he was held.
"They kept the shutters closed," McCain said. "It was very hot in there."
During his captivity, McCain tried to hang himself twice, using his shirt as a noose, but guards caught him and beat him.
"I couldn't control my despair," McCain wrote in his autobiography. "All my pride was lost, and I doubted I would ever stand up to any man again. Nothing could save me."
As an Arizona senator, McCain became a leading advocate of normalizing relations between the United States and Vietnam. And on Wednesday, when he signed the Hoa Lo guest book, he wrote nothing more than "Best Wishes."
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