McCain made a verbal flub during his speech.  After laying out his policy goals, he said: ‘This is the agenda I have set before my fellow prisoners.’

According to the text of the speech released by his campaign, the word was supposed to be ‘citizens,’ not ‘prisoners.’

The text of the speech also helped clarify some of Sen. McCain’s other flubs.  For example, it is now clear that when McCain yelled out, “Ah, Jesus! Ah, Jesus, Ray!  I’m hit! I’m hit! I’m going down!  There’s Charlie all over me!”, what he meant to say was “Friends, I have the experience and the wisdom that America needs during this difficult time of crisis.”

Later, when McCain suddenly dropped to the ground behind the podium, hugged his knees and gently rocked himself back and forth while sobbing, “Where’s Cafferty? Why haven’t they brought back Cafferty? Oh God, I just want to go home.  Oh, please God, just let me go home,” he had apparently intended to say, “Friends, my opponent thinks that what this country needs is more talk...well, I know that solving our problems will take action.”

Finally, judging from the official text, it seems that McCain had intended to end the speech by waving and giving a thumbs up while standing next to running mate Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, rather than by leaping from the stage and using his right thumb to eye-gouge a supporter in the front row, then removing his shoe and brandishing it in an effort to keep security at bay while fumbling at the downed supporter’s belt in apparent search for a pair of guard’s keys “to spring [him] at long last from this hellish prison” [the Lehigh University gymnasium in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania].

McCain’s repeated call to “bomb the rice-munching Chinaman back into the Stone Age,” however, was part of the original text.

Tags: politics, john mccain, the rice-munching chinaman, vietnam war, charlie