Mission accomplished?

Wes Clark is moving on. He expressed regrets:

“Obviously I wish we hadn't had the big brouhaha about this,” Clark said, choosing to begin a Tuesday CNN interview with contrition. “It has taken away from the message of the man that I’m supporting to be president.”

The obvious question is whether he was sent out on a mission or was just shooting from the hip. There seem to be several possibilities:

1. Obama cannot attack his opponent's biggest advantage himself, therefore he's trying to use surrogates (as Bush was accused of during the 2000 and 2004 elections). Non-military hacks can't get away with it and Kerry was unavailable based on his purple heart campaign of 2004. Clark was seen as someone with enough military cred to git r done.

2. The real goal was to provoke McCain into a pissing contest on his military experience and Clark was used because he had more military experience, with the ultimate goal being a display of temper the Democrats could use in commercials.

3. Clark was actually an undercover operative for Team Hillary sent out to make Obama look bad by trashing a POW war hero. She still hasn't given up her delegates.

4. He's a failed presidential wannabe who can't stand the thoughts of someone with less military experience becoming president based mainly on military experience. When the camera came on he couldn't resist making the point, speaking for himself.

One of the above almost certainly has to be true, right? Number 4 seems most likely based on what we know but if 1 or 2 are true then they failed miserably. That leaves number 3, which would seem to be a success at this point based on what Democratic strategist Jim Jordan was attributed as saying:

“But Gen. Clark’s remarks were both clumsy and badly timed and, really, a gift to McCain,” Jordan continued.

In retrospect it seems silly to goad McCain into an eruption (number 2) because the public might forgive that and turn on those causing the outburst. Risky, to some degree. It makes more sense these guys were trying to diminish his main advantage, but it didn't work. And that should make us all wonder why they did it.