This is just the kind of lazy reporting and lazy thinking the McCain camp wants: it's perfectly appropriate to call McCain's bullshit, because every time he brings up his war record he's using it as "experience" in leadership/war/national security. Getting shot down is apparently a prerequisite for working American diplomacy.

Markci has a point, though: that line of attack is easily repurposed to be that McCain's service is being "besmirched." Perhaps this election cycle isn't the time to go after McCain here, or conversely there has to be a better line of attack. (Aside: Obama's "rejecting" of Clark here is utter cowardice.)

But at some point we need to stop giving war heroes blow jobs and insist that getting put through the grinder in combat doesn't qualify them for anything more than passing a test of character and proving their love of country. I wouldn't go under the knife of a brain surgeon because he "courageously" had brains splattered on him on some godforsaken beachhead.