Joe Klein is just plain wrong...

when he says...

Clark is just plain wrong when he says that "getting shot down" doesn't qualify as foreign policy experience.

[From The Nation Faced - Swampland - TIME]

He didn't.

And it doesn't.

So there.

I am the last guy who will say that having had experience in the military is not a good thing in a president - or in anybody else who may have to make life-or-death, peace-or-war decisions. In fact, if there's any point on which McCain looks better than Obama to me, that's it.

In my lifetime Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, George I, and - if you really want to stretch the point - George II had military experience, but the only one whose military experience rose to the level of foreign policy experience was Eisenhower. Being "shot down" - or sunk - as Klein says and as, in fact Clark - and, before him, Schieffer - said is certainly an experience and, plainly, a foreign experience, but a foreign policy experience it is not.

ADD: Obama rushes to back down.

"As he's said many times before, Senator Obama honors and respects Senator McCain's service, and of course he rejects yesterday's statement by General Clark," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

Doesn't take much, does it?