Kerry: If you are not smart, you go to Iraq

Poor John Kerry. Honestly, he should just apologise for his "botched" up joke, no matter how much he says he was actually referring to Bush, not the troops.

Here's a banner from the troops "stuck in Iraq."

So what did he say?

At a campaign event in California, John Kerry said:

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

If he was referring to President Bush, then the words he spoke did not make sense. I do not see how those words would be linked to the President, so therefore, he really mangled his words.

Here's the video:

Bad part to his quote is that the U.S. military is the most educated force in the world (click here for demographics)

Imus responds to Kerry

Update: Kerry Makes Apology

Democratic Sen. John Kerry apologized directly to U.S. troops on Wednesday for comments about Iraq that had prompted a firestorm of criticism from Republicans and President George W. Bush.

"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," Kerry said in a statement.

New York Times Lying?

So it looks the New York newspaper decided to show some bias for Kerry by headlining a news piece called "Flubbed Joke Makes Kerry a Political Punching Bag, Again."

If you read the article, the author, Kate Zernike, chooses to mention Kerry's quote in the 18th paragraph! Was this the goal of the writer to hope that the reader would just zone out by that point?

She claims that Kerry actually said:

Mr. Kerry’s prepared remarks to California students on Monday called for him 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.” In his delivery, he dropped the word “us.”

If you look at the video, he never said "Just ask President Bush."

Again, let's go back to his actual words:

"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."

Zernike is theorising that the rest of his words were cut off or that we should look at his notes, rather than what he actually said.

A thumbs down for the NY Times.