Is Senator Kerry Joking?

I missed what Senator Kerry had done exactly, so a little earlier I asked my dad and he explained it. Then a little while later Fox News played a clip of it. I have to agree with the fellow on Fox News, I don't exactly see how adding the word "us" to what he said would change it, so I did a little more digging and found where CNN had more information on what was said vs what was supposed to have been said.

According to CNN what Kerry said was:

"You know, education -- if you make the most of it, you study hard and 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."

And, according to CNN, what he meant to say was:

A Kerry aide told CNN that the prepared statement, which had been designed to criticize President Bush, "was mangled in delivery."

Kerry was supposed to say, "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."

I don't know, I'm not sure how it matters what he meant to say. He's lost a lot of my trust in him simply by his steadfast refusal to apologize to the men and women that serve this country. How the man can stand there and say that he does not owe them an apology - rather his words were intentional or not - is beyond me.

This entire situation makes me think of Mel Gibson and the people that were all saying that Mel had what he said somewhere within him or he never would have said it. And Senator Kerry can't even claim to have been drunk when he said it.


ref: CNN: Bush on Kerry Remark


Update: Okay, I was watching Fox News a little while ago with my dad, and apparently Sen. Kerry included an appology in things he said this morning. So it looks like he reversed his view on what he had been saying about Pres. Bush being the only one that owed the men and women in the military an appology.