This is infuriating! First, John Kerry says this to a group of Pasadena college students:

    "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

      How insulting can one be? Kerry has denegraded the troops before, but this time, he's called them outright unintelligent. Basically, he said that America has some sort of "social draft"; smart boys and girls go to college, dumb ones join the army because they have no other option. What he obviously doesn't know is that 91% of military officers have Bachelor's degrees and 60 some-odd percent have Master's degrees!!

    Yesterday, President Bush demanded an apology:

    "The Senator's suggestion that the men and women of our military are somehow uneducated is insulting and shameful. The members of the United States military are plenty smart and plenty brave, and the Senator from Massachusetts owes them an apology."

    Also yesterday, Kerry had a press briefing and replied:

    "I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy. If anyone owes our troops in the fields an apology, it is the president and his failed team and a republican majority in the Congress that has been willing to stamp, rubber-stamp, policies that have done injury to our troops and their families."

    ...Shoving the blame on anybody else but himself.

    Senator Kerry claims that he wasn't referring to the troops, he was referring to President Bush. He was also making a joke, but he "botched" it. This is what he supposedly is meant to have said:

    "Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush."

    Um, right. John Kerry doesn't need to be talking about President Bush's "bad grades". President Bush had a higher college GPA than Kerry did! Also, I'm curious to know, if one is "intellectually lazy", how does one become President of the United States?

    Even if Kerry did have the benefit of the doubt, where is the joke in all of this? Is there anything funny to be found?

    Of course, the Democrats don't want to be associated with this kind of behavior (although they usually do stand behind it ) right before an election. So the Democrats started condemning Kerry's announcement, and along with the White House, demanded an apology. It's somewhat interesting that he refused to apologize until Hillary Clinton denounced his statement today. Suddenly, he's "apologetic":

   "As a combat veteran, I want to make it clear to anyone in uniform and to their loved ones: my poorly stated joke at a rally was not about, and never intended to refer to any troop.

    I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform, and I personally apologize to any service member, family member, or American who was offended.

    It is clear the Republican Party would rather talk about anything but their failed security policy. I don’t want my verbal slip to be a diversion from the real issues. I will continue to fight for a change of course to provide real security for our country, and a winning strategy for our troops."

   As a combat veteran, he came back from Vietnam lying about the "atrocities of war" that went on there. Oh, nooo... of course he wouldn't say anything negative about the troops. Never. 

   Senator Kerry issued his first two statements on national TV. This statement, however, was a retraction that he posted on his website. That is a sure-fire way to publicly apologize. Baically, in his apology, he stated that he regrets that we (as the national audience of his statment)  misinterpreted him. He's sorry that we made a mistake. Our bad! He's also sorry that anyone was offended. Notice that he's not apologizing that he did the offending, or that he was wrong in making the statement. He doesn't want to take the blame. Also, it's amazing how he claims that the Republicans want to create a diversion from the issues. Is that what the Democrats did when they made a federal case out of the Mark Foley scandal (which legally, was nothing at all ) two weeks prior to the election? Is that what the Democrats did when they wouldn't (and still won't) drop what Rush Limbaugh said about Michael J. Fox?  He claim to want to provide real security and a winning strategy for our troops. Well, we can start by providing them body armor (which he voted against) and boosting their morale by not letting them be insulted by a Senator who obviously doesn't appreciate their sacrifice!

   Even if the troops weren't educated, does it really matter as long as they can shoot to kill? Is one man's trigger finger less qualified than another's simply because he didn't graduate from Yale? Honestly, how appreciative is it to denegrade those who have lesser education and to point out their intellectual inequalities when they are out there putting their lives on the line for you?

   It's absolutely shameful what John Kerry did, and the "apology" he offered was no apology at all. I'm disappointed in the Republicans for letting it go like they have. Every time the Republicans have a "scandal", the Democrats won't drop it for weeks. In this case, where it is legitmate to have some righteous indignation, the Republicans should give the Democrats a taste of their own medicine.