the standard interpretation of this affair seems to be that the McCain camp has seized on Gen. Clark's comment because they see political advantage in insinuating via allegorical leaps that Obama is somehow contemptuous of McCain's war record--painting Obama as one of the 1960s hippie/yippie troop-hating radicals who have been foils for every Republican campaign since Nixon '68 even as they gradually turned to straw.

which makes sense, but I think there is something else going on here.  the McCain camp was initially described as "furious" at the remark, and I am sure that McCain was as well.   if you assume that Clark was implying the positive by stating the negative (which I do not, by the way), "McCain's war record does not make him qualified to be President" becomes "McCain's war record makes him unfit to be President."  that isn't much of a misreading.  I suspect that the McCain camp really did think that Clark was obliquely "swiftboating" McCain by linking his war record to his qualifications to be President.

Why misread what Clark actually said and then fly into a rage?  Because McCain has been swiftboated  before:  by Karl Rove's people (probably) in the 2000 primary race and by fringe operators in the 2008 primary race.  There is a great deal of material on the web stating that McCain broke under torture, that he attempted suicide, that he has Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, that he received preferential treatment when he was a POW, that he exaggerated his war record, that he reduced a POW/MIA widow to tears during a Congressional hearing, etc. etc.  (see links below).  All to imply that he is not a hero at all, that he's mentally unstable, that he's anti-vet and that he may be some sort of Manchurian Candidate foisted on us by the Commies.

Note again that I am not suggesting Gen. Clark -was- swiftboating McCain, but rather that McCain and his camp are highly sensitive to any -critical- use of his war record in political discourse.  Such criticism is currently at the far fringes of such discourse; McCain as super-patriot hero military man is an unquestioned narrative and at the center of his campaign.  Is there substantive reason to doubt this narrative?  The McCain camp would -hate- it if the media started to investigate that question.

The McCain camp may be pushing back so hard on this not because it sees opportunity, but because it is afraid of someone exploiting a real political vulnerability.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/005084.php
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t89373.html