John Kerry: “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.”
If you just read those words on their own, it’s pretty clear what Kerry is saying: Good students can “do well.” Those who maybe weren’t such good students — like, for instance, our current president — end up “stuck in Iraq.”
It’s not a great joke, and it’s no model of clarity. But only someone absolutely determined to score points would read it and state with certainty that Kerry meant our soldiers in Iraq are idiots. So of course that’s what Tony Snow and the GOP attack machine are saying. (CNN’s lead basically buys it hook and sinker.)
There’s the stench of Swift Boating here. But Kerry’s not up for election this time. The vote is about Bush’s disastrous Iraq policies. And anyone who really cares about the welfare of our troops — who’ve been thrust into an unnecessary war without the forces, the equipment, or the strategy they need to win — will realize that the Bush administration is playing a desperate game of “Don’t look behind the curtain.”
Maybe they’ll successfully hijack the news cycle for a day or two by twisting Kerry’s words. Every minute spent arguing about what Kerry might have meant is a minute we’re not talking about the wasted billions and the wasted lives. Sooner or later we’ll return to the stark fact of this White House’s responsibility for driving America into the Iraq ditch.
Kerry responds: “If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they’re crazy… The people who owe our troops an apology are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who misled America into war and have given us a Katrina foreign policy that has betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it… No Democrat will be bullied by an administration that has a cut and run policy in Afghanistan and a stand still and lose strategy in Iraq.”
[tags]john kerry, iraq, 2006 elections[/tags]
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Sorry, Scott. Ordinary folks who don’t spend their days playing gotcha will nevertheless think Kerry was casting aspersions on the troops, or at least advising those college kids to avoid service. This isn’t the first time that Kerry has played with these sorts of ideas — denigrating soldiers, other soldiers. It takes a bit of thought, and some good will toward Kerry to see another possible interpretation of his remarks. A great many (otherwise non-partisan) people don’t think he’s worth that much time or effort.
Good and interesting interview with RB!
I’ve got to agree with Mel. The first time I read that quote, my eyes got wide and I thought, “Oh now, that was a really dumb thing to say; thanks a LOT, Senator.” With a bit of “goodwill toward Kerry” I figured that he didn’t mean any offense by it, but my first thought was certainly NOT that he was making jokes about the President. And Joe SixPack will certainly not think so either, unfortunately.
When I read the original statement there was no doubt that Kerry was refering to the “Bush Bunch” and was surprised that anyone would misinterpret his meaning. Maybe those who missed the point SHOULD get stuck in Iraq. In any case I was delighted to hear John Kerry’s strong response. As an ex-Vietnam era sailor I’m sickened that the hate mongers made the term Swiftboat a synonym for distortion, lies and hate.
Anyone thinking that Kerry would insult the troops is contentious and close minded. You have to have to dig pretty low in the scumm bucket to believe that one. If you watch what he said just before, there’s ZERO doubt about what Kerry meant.
BTW, this story wasn’t about Kerry. There’s no story there. There’s nothing new about what was going to happen. We all knew Kerry was going to apologise and we all knew that he didn’t insult the troops. Where’s the ‘new’ information that makes it news? No, it’s the media got played to take the attention away from Iraq and Bush’s failed administration. The target of the story was the media. People have verbal slip-ups all the time. That couldn’t have possibly been the story. This is as lame duck of a story as I’ve ever heard. It could have easily been about crop circles just as long as it took attention away from the Republicans.