He ended with the familiar story recounted so many times here this week and throughout his career. A story of a mission over North Vietnam, of falling out of the sky toward a Hanoi lake, of breaking bones and refusing early release and being tortured by his captors until he broke, and how a fellow prisoner saved him, convinced him to keep fighting for his countrymen who had fought for him.
"I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's," McCain said. "I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's."
