Cindy McCain's humanitarianism would be asset as first lady

By Michael Gerson Washington Post Writers Group Published: Thursday, July 24, 2008 12:11 a.m. MDT KIGALI, Rwanda — Cindy McCain's first visit to this country in 1994 was during the high season of roadblocks and machetes and shallow graves. Following a call for help from Doctors Without Borders, McCain had assembled a medical team with the intention of setting up a mobile hospital in Rwanda. Arriving by private plane in mid-April, a couple of weeks into the massacres, she realized that the chaos made deploying her team impossible. At the airport, she paid for the use of a truck and set out for Goma in then-Zaire, where hundreds of thousands of refugees were also headed. "I never saw anyone harmed," McCain recalls, "but I saw the bodies along the roadside." Checkpoints were manned by 12- and 13-year-olds with AK-47s. "The kids... [read full story]