McCarthy could probably have skipped out on the war altogether had he wanted to, since he was well into his 30's when the war broke out, and serving as a judge. He gets kudos from me for serving in a hot zone and risking death, mutilation, or the horrors of a Japanese POW camp.
I read Stanton’s book. McCarthy had problems with alcohol, he exaggerated some personal records, and he sometimes went off on a tangent and attacked the wrong target. Nevertheless, he was right about his central assertion of communists in high and low positions in the government. The leftists have always used misdirection to try an invalidate what McCarthy discovered. The facts are: most of what he asserted was true...the government did have a lot of commies. Thanks to McCarthy, many of them were booted out. He deserves praise not condemnation.