maybe it's just politics, maybe it's not...
Now, maybe I have seen it all in politics. Next Tuesday may prove that statement wrong, but for now, I think I have.
Two days ago, Senator John Kerry was stumping for the already defeated California democratic gubenatorial candidate. Kerry went into a bunch of one-liners about President Bush. As usual, John Kerry is no Henny Youngman or even Carrot Top. In his monologue, he made a reference to people who don't pay attention and study in school "get stuck in Iraq."
This obscure line would have drifted into the political graveyard except for one thing. The butt of the joke, the one being called "stupid", didn't get it. The one being called stupid was the President.
Now, I'm not calling the President stupid here, but Kerry's line was seemingly validated when President Bush missed the point just like they've missed so many points over the last 6 years.
Bush took the line as an insult to the troops, as if we still have a draft. As if kids who flunk out of school have to go into the military.
Someone needs to remind the President that no draft exists, and failed students more often than not go to work, not the military.
But the lack of realization didn't stop the Campaigner in Chief and his punditry from going on the attack. They boldly went into the land of feet looking for mouths to inhabit , charging that Kerry owed the troops an apology.
No he doesn't. Mr President, you and your pundits owe Mr Kerry an apology for once again being so eager to trash him, that the facts are discarded.
But unlike the lying Swift Boat attacks, this time, Mr Kerry was not gonna take it or wait for a never coming overdue apology. In a response to the White House's delusional charges, Mr Kerry said this...
"I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy."
Kerry said the comment in question was "a botched joke about the president and the president's people, not about the troops ... and they know that's what I was talking about."
And he didn't stop there...
That, Kerry said, was meant as a reference to Bush, not troops. Kerry said it is the president who owes U.S. soldiers an apology — for "a Katrina foreign policy" that misled the country into war in Iraq, failed to adequately study and plan for the aftermath, has not properly equipped troops and has expanded the terrorist threat.
"I'm sick and tired of a bunch of despicable Republicans who will not debate real policy, who won't take responsibility for their own mistakes, standing up and trying to make other people the butt of those mistakes," he said. "It disgusts me that a bunch of these Republican hacks who've never worn the uniform of our country are willing to lie about those who did."
It's about time that John Kerry got his spine back. Maybe George Bush needs to get Karl Rove in his office so he can have his brain back. That is, if Mr Kerry was correct.