John Kerry's comments

John Kerry made an incredibly stupid comment while speaking to students at Pasadena City College yesterday. Here's the comment in question:

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

Here's the video:


For someone who has been a politician for a quarter-century, this is an incredibly stupid comment. Even though I do not think he was directly referring to American troops, his comments were ambiguous and thus open to justified criticism.

The President and many other Republican leaders have used this comment in an attempt to portray Democrats as being against the troops. I think that is a bit over the top, but Kerry had to expect that.

Here's what the president said:

The Massachusetts senator has explained his comments as a botched joke.

A source close to Kerry tells NBC News that he was trying to make a "tough and honest joke" about Bush and that in the process he omitted two words which changed the intended meaning. Per the source, Kerry meant to say that he can't "overstress the importance of a great education" and that "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." Kerry mistakenly dropped the "getting us" from his initial remarks.

John Kerry responded to these "attacks" in a televised statement, and a press release. John Kerry use these two opportunities to further attack the president and his "failed policies." Hot Air has the video clip, and you can read parts of the press release below.

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. This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did.

I’m not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq. It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.

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. These Republicans are afraid to debate veterans who live and breathe the concerns of our troops, not the empty slogans of an Administration that sent our brave troops to war without body armor.

Bottom line, these Republicans want to debate straw men because they’re afraid to debate real men. And this time it won’t work because we’re going to stay in their face with the truth and deny them even a sliver of light for their distortions. 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.”

Can you say meltdown? His televised statement combined with this press release are very dumb PR moves. These responses made the issue larger than it already was. The second paragraph was incredibly strident and petty. Calling Tony Snow a "stuffed suit" and Rush Limbaugh "doughy" is not a mature response from a former presidential candidate.