Tuesday, October 31, 2006

John Kerry insults U.S. military

Kerry's statement has roiled military men and women and anyone who happens to like the U.S. The Chicago Tribune has an interesting take on Kerry's attempts at damage control:


    An angry Kerry tried to give his supporters and Democrats something to fight back with when he said: “My statement yesterday, and the White House knows this full well, was a botched joke about the president and the president’s people, not about the troops.

    “… If anyone thinks that a veteran, someone like me who’s been fighting my entire career to provide for veterans to fight for their benefits, to help honor what their service is, if anybody thinks that a veteran would somehow criticize more than 140,000 troops fighting in Iraq and not the president and his people who put them there, they’re crazy. It’s just wrong….”

    But here’s the problem. In his moment of high dudgeon, he may have made matters worse. It probably wasn’t a good idea to accuse everyone who saw the video of his campaign appearance and thought he was disparaging the IQ of U.S. troops of being “crazy.”

    CNN has reported that David Wade, Kerry’s communications director (a challenging job as you can imagine) says what Kerry should’ve said was this: “I can't overstress the importance of a great education. 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.”

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