Now, Wesley Clark was on Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer, and he said that he didn’t think that McCain’s service as a fighter pilot and prisoner of war was relevant to running the country. He didn’t think it was a qualification for being the president of the United States.

Wesley Clark from 2004 at the Democrat National Convention, and remember General Clark was running for president himself, and he lost out to Kerry in the primaries. Here is a portion of Wesley Clark’s speech.

War. War. I’ve been there. So has John Kerry. John Kerry has heard the thump of enemy mortars. He’s seen the flash of the tracers. He’s lived the values of service and sacrifice. In the Navy, as a prosecutor, as a senator, he proved his physical courage under fire. And he’s proved his moral courage too. John Kerry fought a war, and I respect him for that. And he came home to fight a peace. And I respect him for that, too. John Kerry’s combination of physical courage and moral values, is my definition of what we need as Americans in our commander-in-chief.

Oh, so much here. First off, how do you come home and “fight a peace”? How do you do that?

Well, Kerry did it. He was the architect. He was the scriptwriter for how you come home and “fight a peace.” We get out of Vietnam, and they won’t let it go. It was John Kerry throwing his medals over the White House gate. (Fake medals. He kept his real ones at home.) It was John Kerry who was telling lies about the Swift Boat buddies, telling lies about American combat troops in general, that they were raping and mutilating and doing all this Genghis Khan stuff. While America was trying to heal from all of this and get over it, John Kerry was indeed “fighting a peace.” Kerry came home and lied about American soldiers to a Senate committee. That’s how he was “fighting a peace.”

Wesley Clark, a man — which, again, Democrats seem to feel the need to prove to people that they are patriotic. Even when nobody is charging them with being unpatriotic, they still feel the need to prove it, which is quite telling to me. Then we have these comments from Wesley Clark four years ago in which we now remember that the Democrats nominated their version of a war hero, as a means of being elected president. This is after 9/11; they’re convinced the American people want somebody tough in the White House, and so Kerry wore a uniform and Kerry was this for them. But then the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth came out with their ads (which nobody has disproven, by the way) and Kerry was toast.

But just above Wesley Clark define qualifications for the presidency based on Kerry and his military service.

“He lived the values of service and sacrifice. In the Navy, as a prosecutor, as a Senator…” There’s a lot of sacrificing in the Senate. “[H]e proved his physical courage under fire…. [H]e came home to fight a peace… [P]hysical courage and moral values, is my definition of what we need as Americans in our commander-in-chief.”

Now, he define presidential qualifications for Americans, by using John Kerry as an example. Let’s now go to Face the Nation, host Bob Schieffer talking to Wesley Clark. He said,

SCHIEFFER: “Well, you went so far as to say that you thought John McCain was, quote — and these are your words — ‘untested and untried.’ And I must say, I had to read that twice, because you’re talking about somebody who was a prisoner of war. He was a squadron commander of the largest squadron in the Navy. He’s been on the Senate Armed Services Committee for lo these many years. How can you say that John McCain is untested and untried, General?”

CLARK: Because in the matters of national security policymaking, it’s a matter of understanding risk, it’s a matter of gauging your opponents, and it’s a matter of being held accountable. John McCain’s never done any of that in his official positions. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded? That wasn’t a wartime squadron. He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn’t seen what it’s like when diplomats come in and say, “I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to get this point through or not. Do you want to take the risk? What about your reputation? How do we handle this publicly?”

SCHIEFFER: Yeah.

CLARK: He hasn’t made that calls, Bob.

SCHIEFFER: Well, General –

“He hasn’t made those calls.” Do you believe this? By the way, I don’t for a minute believe that he’s out there as an independent contractor. This is not an idle comment on MSNBC when nobody is watching at ten o’clock at night. This is one of the revered Sunday morning shows. These comments are rehearsed! These comments are made on purpose.

SCHIEFFER: “I have to say, Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences, either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down.”

CLARK: Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.

SCHIEFFER: Really!

CLARK: But Barack is not… He is not running on the fact that he has made these national security pronouncements. He’s running on his other strengths. He’s running on his strength of character, on the strengths of his communication skills, on the strengths of his judgment. And those are qualities that we seek in our national leadership.

I don’t know how in the world you can sit around and tar and feather McCain as being “unqualified” after having been a prisoner of war for five years. You talked about “sacrifice.” He talked about John Kerry’s sacrifice. You talk about “bravery.” McCain went into the teeth of the dog in this war. He stayed in the Navy for eight years after he got out of the Hanoi Hilton. He never went to Washington and threw his medals over the White House fence. He never bumped and decried his fellow airmen or soldiers or Marines who fought in Vietnam.

Wesley Clark above: “It’s a matter of gauging your opponent. It’s a matter of being held accountable. McCain has never done any of that in his official positions. He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall.”

Let me tell you what they’re heading at here.

If you go to certain left-wing blogs and websites, you will find all kinds of vicious attacks on McCain, such as accusing him of war crimes for bombing civilian targets in Hanoi in the 1960s. There are others who are accusing McCain of disloyalty during his captivity in Vietnam because they say that he was coerced into participation in propaganda films and interviews after he had been tortured.

John Aravosis at something called Americablog.com wrote, “A lot of people don’t know that McCain wrote propaganda video for the enemy while he was in captivity. Putting that bit of disloyalty aside, what exactly is McCain’s experience that prepares him for being commander-in-chief? Getting shot down, tortured, and then doing propaganda for the enemy is not command experience,” this guy wrote in a blog post titled, “Honestly, Besides Being Tortured, What Did McCain Do to Excel in the Military?”

So the left-wing blogs have started this, and Wesley Clark is picking up the theme. There is an echo chamber on the left too, and more and more of these left-wing talking points that are shouted and emitted by Obama’s people and his campaign come from the dark reaches of the kook left. So now, not only is McCain not qualified just because he flew a bombing mission and got shot down over Hanoi and then spent five years in as a prisoner of war. That doesn’t qualify him! No, what John Kerry did is more of a qualification! John Kerry had moral character! You heard Wesley Clark. After Clark twice now rip McCain, praises Kerry four years ago at the Democrat National Convention.

Wesley Clark ought to have zero credibility with anybody. This is nothing but a partisan, political hack who himself was incompetent! Didn’t Clinton fire the guy? He was the NATO general in the Bosnia war, and I think even Clinton fired the guy! He’s a big pretender.

And by the way, here’s Obama out there with his patriotism lecture, frankly, I don’t think we need to be lectured to on patriotism by Barak Obama. Here’s a guy who trashes the country all the time. His minister trashed the country all the time. His friend William Ayers tried to overthrow the country!

We don’t need lectures from Obama on patriotism. “Well, that’s not the William Ayers that I knew. That’s not the Reverend Wright that I knew all these years.” He has just, by his own definition, thrown both of these guys on the bus. They are not American patriots. Obama gets away with recasting himself as often as he wants. The Media will bend over forwards and backwards — they’ll put themselves in pretzel-like positions — in order to accommodate this guy’s daily recalibrations so he can appear to move to the non-controversial “center.”