This is in today's NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/31/politics/campaign/31apple.html
Choice quotes:
In Mr. McCain's speech last night to the Republican National Convention, the Arizona senator concentrated on the present, not the past ... But when we talked over a drink the night before, Mr. McCain grew agitated about the television commercials sponsored by a group of Vietnam veterans who question the war record of Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee, and specifically his entitlement to the medals that he won. He found the advertisements "completely nauseating," Mr. McCain said.
[...]
"If they question Kerry's medals," he said, "they question everybody's medals. All those men who found it so hard to come home, who found so little gratitude for their sacrifices when they got here, are going to feel mistreated again. The families of the people whose names are on the monument in Washington will feel wronged, too. The painful wounds we all worked so hard to close will all be reopened.
"We've got to get that garbage off the air as soon as we can."