arlos wrote:He apologized today. Was a retarded thing to say, no doubt. Which is worse, though: Suggesting the troops are stupid, or sending them out to die without proper gear and equipment (body armor, humvee armor, etc.), and then dragged their feet about providing said gear?
-Arlos
Saying he apologized is complete bullshit.
John Kerry wrote: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.
What was said:
John Kerry wrote: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.
What he was supposed to say:
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.
Yea he botched his joke, but regardless if you include the punch line or not, the content and the insinuation remain the same. There is no difference between the two statements beyond including a shot at Bush... but I guess in his mind anytime you are taking a shot at bush it makes whatever else you say okay?
Then the meat of his "apology":
John Kerry wrote: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.
How was he misinterpreted? I see no way to misinterpret his statement, no where do we see him correcting or explaining how his statement was not derogatory toward soldiers already in Iraq. This apology predicates it's self on him first being misinterpreted, people were not offended because they didn't understand what he said, they were offended because they completely understood what he said. He didn't say he was wrong in what he said, he never attempted to explain what he really meant. He made no genuine apology.
I won't even go into his accusation that this was somehow spun into something different from the words he spoke by the Bush administration. The White House didn't have to put any spin on it, the American people and our troops in the field can hear loud and clear exactly how he thinks by the words he speaks.
His statement yesterday and the crap he spewed today as an apology makes it crystal clear to me that the people of this country chose the better of the two in the last presidential election, maybe we could have done better but with a political system dominated by two parties we chose the best candidate available.
What is really a travesty is that Kerry at his age has never learned what most do at a young age, that an apology because you are sorry you got caught is empty, and true apology can only happen if you actually have remorse for your words or actions.