"It doesn't take a lot of talent to intercept a surface-to-air missile with your own airplane."

I can just feel the rage building from the right wing echo chamber -- "Another Wes Clark smear of John McCain!!" Unfortunately, that quote comes from McCain himself. Which just goes to show, McCain might be protesting a little too much here.

Wes Clark is not a swiftboater. His comments on Face The Nation last weekend did not question McCain's medals, question his service record, question his injuries under fire, and was not an insult to every soldier who has ever won the Purple Heart. Republicans did do all that to John Kerry, four years ago. Remember them waving fingers with little bandages imprinted with tiny Purple Hearts at their national convention? That is what "dishonoring" or "attacking" a candidate's service records looks like. But you certainly wouldn't know it listening to some folks out there, most of them Republicans.

The facts of the case have been reported endlessly in the past few days, so I will not repeat them here. But even the lefty bloggers who have rallied to Clark's side are missing something important in this debate: we can't evaluate John McCain's service record -- because he's never made it public.

This fact hasn't penetrated to the mainstream media, that's for sure. Here is NBC's Brian Williams, pretending to be a journalist, on the first night back after the story broke on Sunday:

"Now to the presidential campaign, where suddenly John McCain's war record is an issue in the campaign. Not that there are any questions about his war record, mind you. Annapolis graduate, naval aviator, shot down over Hanoi during the Vietnam War, captured, tortured, held as a POW for five years."

[Editor's note: A verb, Brian... we need a verb in each sentence!]

How exactly he comes to the conclusion: "Not that there are any questions about his war record, mind you," is a complete and utter mystery. Nobody has any questions about McCain's war service? You see, Brian, in what is called "journalism," you question everything until there is proof in front of you one way or the other. I'm surprised I have to explain stuff like this to you.

And that is my point -- there is no proof. Because John McCain refuses to let the press and the public see it. And that, to me, is an issue worth exploring in someone who is trying to get elected president.

Because there are rumors out there. I won't repeat them here, because nothing I've seen yet rises to the level of being proven (by a long shot), but questions do indeed exist about McCain's service. All these rumors and all of these questions could easily be put to rest. All McCain would have to do is sign Standard Form 180 and release every page of his military record to the press.

Why has he not done so, and -- more importantly -- why has nobody in the press even asked him about it? Because, "mind you," Brian Williams says the questions don't exist? That's pathetic.

For instance, how many people know John McCain was at the center of an accident on an aircraft carrier that killed over 100 sailors? It's a pretty dramatic part of McCain's military record, and yet I don't recall ever hearing about it in the past year or so in the mainstream media. McCain apparently bravely cheated death in this incident, crawling out of his burning plane's wreckage. But again, "mind you," the question of exactly what happened in this deadly accident does not exist, because Mr. Williams told me so. As far as the media is concerned, the incident itself never happened, or isn't worth mentioning.

Again, I don't know one way or the other whether McCain is hiding something in his military records. George W. Bush got to be president without releasing his complete National Guard file, so it can indeed be done.

But John Kerry released every page of his records. John McCain has released a few select pages (all of them laudatory, of course) out of what is reported to be hundreds of pages in his file. Much like his wife's release of two pages of one year's tax returns, the press seems satisfied with this, and seems to have collectively agreed never to raise the question again. Unlike how the press treats Barack Obama's past, this is getting to be standard operating procedure for looking into McCain's past.

But now the Wes Clark episode is making the absence of McCain's military record a little more conspicuous. And John McCain himself opened this door. How many television ads has he run with footage of him as prisoner of war? How many times has he told POW stories on the campaign trail? He has put this experience at the heart of his own campaign, meaning it is entirely fair game to examine under a microscope, and not some sort of subject which is entirely out of bounds to even ask a question about.

But here's the real irony in the situation -- Wes Clark ran for president himself. And guess what? He released his entire military record to major newspapers.

So Clark, in the next salvo of this back-and-forth with McCain, needs to forcefully point this out, in the hopes the mainstream media will wake from their slumber and realize their own lack of curiosity in this area.

The next time I hear Clark speak, I would thoroughly enjoy hearing the following from him:

"I believe that every person who runs for the highest office in this land should be completely transparent, and release their full military record to the public for examination. John Kerry did so when he ran for president, and I myself did so when I ran for president. I don't know why John McCain hasn't done so. You'll have to ask him that. Ask him why he has never signed Standard Form 180, and released his full record to you -- you're the press, you're supposed to ask him things like that."

-- Chris Weigant