(I've posted things like this before, but now I'm tempted to make them a series.)

1. John McCain got Bud Day, one of the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" who spent most of 2004 intentionally lying about John Kerry's service record to prevent Kerry from being elected president, to attack Gen. Wesley Clark and Sen. Jim Webb for mentioning the incredibly obvious facts that:

   • John McCain deserves respect for the enormous sacrifice he made for this country, regardless of why he did it

   • Nonetheless, John McCain's military career was not a stellar one:

     • He graudated in the bottom 0.6% of his Naval Academy class. As Wikipedia puts it (with citations):

       McCain had conflicts with higher-ups, and he was disinclined to obey every rule, which contributed to a low class rank (894 of 899) that he did not aim to improve. McCain did well in academic subjects that interested him, such as literature and history, but studied only enough to pass subjects he disliked, such as math.

       Ignorance of areas he doesn't like and refusal to follow the rules pretty much define McCain's life.

     • After entering full-time naval aviation service, he crashed two planes and ran a third one into power lines.

     • He got shot down over Vietnam in October 1967, but of course that's not a sign of a bad pilot. Unlike other POWs, he received medical care because his father, Admiral John S. McCain, was an important US military leader who, in mid-1968, was named commander of all US forces in the Vietnam theater. While McCain refused an offer of early release for propaganda purposes ("the North Vietnamese … wanted to show other POWs that elites like McCain were willing to be treated preferentially"), he did crack under torture and signed an anti-American "confession" that he would not otherwise have signed:

       McCain slowly wrote, "I am a black criminal and I have performed the deeds of an air pirate. I almost died and the Vietnamese people saved my life, thanks to the doctors."

       This makes McCain's current support for torturing prisoners in US custody all the more repellent.

     • Upon release from Vietnam, McCain turned around an underperforming Navy flight squadron and served as the Navy's liason to the US Senate, but was not going to advance like his father had, as Wikipedia summarizes:

       McCain decided to leave the Navy. He was unlikely to ever make full admiral, as he had poor annual physicals and had been given no major sea command. In early 1981, he was told he would be made rear admiral; he declined the prospect, as he already made plans to run for Congress and said he could "do more good there."

     Most Naval officers never make admiral or read admiral, and their service, like McCain's, is still a great honor to this country and worthy of all the praise it receives. Even a bad soldier deserves his country's respect and support for his willingness to serve and sacrifice, and there's no evidence McCain was a bad servicemember. He just wasn't the stellar kind that would take him to the top. These are facts, not attacks.

2. McCain's decision to enter politics was backed by the finances of his new wife. His first wife, who supported him throughout his captivity, was in a disfiguring car accident in 1969, one McCain never knew about until he was released. He began cheating on his crippled wife in 1976 or 1977, and stared the affair with his current wife, Cindy Lou (Hensley) McCain, before he and his first wife separated and he sought a divorce. McCain takes responsibility for these actions, but I seem to recall that Bill Clinton taking "responsibility" for his in the same way didn't seem to satisfy the media in the slightest.

3. None of this would have worked for McCain had he not been able to get out of his first marriage so he could use his second wife's money to finance his first run for Congress. His divorce attorney, who helped make it all possible, was a fellow former Navy veteran who was also a Vietnam POW, and who saw McCain in the hospital at his lowest point, when they were all convinced he was about to die.

   Who was that attorney and decades-long friend of McCain? George "Bud" Day, the same "Swift Boat" liar that McCain's campaign brought out to claim that stating the facts about McCain's military career, and the fact that being a POW does not automatically qualify you for the presidency, was an attack on McCain.

4. McCain criticized the "Swift Boat" campaign in 2004 and called for it to stop, yet despite his own personal power as an influential member of the US Senate, a former presidential candidate, a media darling, and someone on John Kerry's short list for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination, McCain appears to have done nothing to tell his decades-long friend "Bud" Day to lay off, to stop lying, and to disown the group.

   Either McCain didn't really object to the group's attacks after all, or he was simply unable to exercise any leadership or control over people that he should easily have been able to influence by the threat of public personal denunciation.

5. This week, John McCain's campaign is attacking Barack Obama's campaign by saying that Obama can't control people he should easily be able to influence.

If the parties were reversed, and the Democratic candidate had this military career (like Kerry did) and the Republicans were the ones saying it wasn't an automatic qualifier for the Oval Office, he would be lambasted on CNN, MSNBC, and especially FOX News, every day, every show, every hour, for the next two months.

Not so much when the Republican candidate does it.

Also, if a Democratic candidate for president made constant mention of his time as a POW in campaign materials and commercials, but then continually let his surrogates claim that he "never talks about it," they'd be having a 24/7 wankfest over that, too. With John McCain, not so much.