On October 26, 1967, current United States Senator John McCain was a Navy pilot performing bombing missions over Hanoi in North Vietnam when he was aircraft was shot down by a missile. Somehow he survived the crash after ejecting before the plane hit the ground, but suffered broken arms and a leg before almost drowning in a lake before doing so. He was then pulled ashore by a few members of the North Vietnamese military and subsequently beat to a pulp: a few of the men crushed his shoulder with the butts of their rifle while a few others “bayoneted” him.

The fun had just begun, however, because in pieces the enemy sent him to a prison in Hanoi known jokingly as the “Hanoi Hilton”. He was denied medical attention for some time when he arrived at the facility, and it was only after his captors figured out that he his father was a top military man that they had him treated.

He would go on to spend two years in solitary confinement before being nominated for a severe torture campaign by the communist militants.

This from Wikipedia:

He was subjected to rope bindings and repeated beatings every two hours, at the same time as he was suffering from dysentery. Further injuries led to the beginning of a suicide attempt, stopped by guards. Eventually, McCain made an anti-American propaganda “confession”. He has always felt that his statement was dishonorable, but as he later wrote, “I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine.”

One of the men who administered McCain’s suffering, a North Vietnamese man named Tran Trong Duyet who at one point was in charge of the “Hanoi Hilton”, was interviewed by the BBC amid McCain’s race for the presidency in the 2008 election.

Here it is:

*For the record: Duyet denies that his prison ever tortured their prisoners, but, come on.*