Kerry inserts foot in mouth again

If we didn't learn anything else in 2004, we should have figured out that whenever there is an election pending someone should lock up John Kerry and his unwavering instinct for putting his foot in his mouth. Here's what he said Monday at a graduation ceremony:

"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."

Despite the fact that everyone in his audience knew long before he said it that it was true - we all know that every U.S. war is class-based - that it's always the poor that are sent to die for the Bushes and the Cheneys. It was a stupid thing to say. Why at this point in the election process give the right-wing phonies unnecessary ammunition.

Then to compound the stupidity Kerry said:

the comment 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."

If it was a joke, it was even dumber than it originally seemed. But, of course, it wasn't.



Right away one of the most predictable right-wing knee-jerks, the White House hungry senator from Arizona had this to say:

"the suggestion that only the least educated Americans would agree to serve in the military and fight in Iraq is an insult to every soldier serving in combat today."

Of course, that's not what Kerry said, but then truth is not a right-wing strong point these days.

Finally Kerry said what he should have said right away:

"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."

And that finally is the truth. Although it won't shut up those who want to use the original gaffe for their own political purposes. In other words, Bush, Cheney and McCain want to exploit the troops again.

But please, someone lock John Kerry up.