ROGER SIMON: “Just as David Petraeus is making us feel good about our military, along comes Wes Clark to remind us that no institution is perfect. ”

Petraeus, however, hasn’t been booted from his command.

UPDATE: More on Clark from Slate, back in 2001. Among other things, we learn that in U.S. military circles “he was considered a showboating egotist and a devious political operator.” And not much of a general, by all appearances.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More:

Get the politics out of the military? It’s Clark and Webb who are injecting all the politics into the military right now. Webb is pissing me off. I don’t know how McCain can resist taking the bait. Do the Obama people have someone who can be even more annoying than Webb on this subject? They seem to be wheeling out the military men one after the other. Clark didn’t do the trick, so up comes Webb. Can they top Webb?

Anyway, Dowd’s point is that Obama wants to get us out of Iraq, but he can’t even get us out of Vietnam.

To me, the most striking line in Dowd’s piece was this one:

“So, what’s going on, guys?” he asked on the tarmac at dusk. “What’s going on on Friday night? You’ll be back in time to have some fun.”

And what about you? a reporter asked the candidate. “I can’t have fun anymore,” Obama said, in a comment meant to be wry but sounding wistful. “It’s not allowed.”

It’ll only get worse if he’s elected. As noted in the past, it’s a job that no sane person could love for eight years. Obama’s sounding a bit sane, here.

MORE: From the comments:

This is playing out as if McCain has a mole inside the strategy sessions of the Democrats, guiding them to fight the campaign exactly where their candidate is weakest and their opponent is strongest.

Do they really want people, going into the 4th of July holiday, to be concentrating on the service and sacrifices of John McCain? Really?

Good point.