What do the troops in Iraq think about the "botched joke" John Kerry told?

I love it!

The voters of Massachusetts are the dumb ones for returning this bozo to the senate!

they keep putting Ted Kennedy there as well.

As usual, Mary Jo Koepechne was unavailable for comment.

But a shame that those guys are getting the same out-of-context critique of George Bush that the rest of us are getting.
Whatever, I'm not going to defend John Kerry. The guy couldn't tell a joke to save his life. I only voted for him to avoid voting for the alternative.

on this whole fiasco at this post:

http://wherearemykeys.townhall.com/g/f260a7b9-de57-4876-a486-794d668d3721

Do I think he was trying to "burn" Bush with a zinger? Probably. Did he screw it up? Yes.

That being said, Kerry could have made this all go away with two little words:

I'm sorry.

But he chose to fight a battle that didn't need to be fought.

The result?

*He's fired up the Republican base
*He's made himself the lead story on every news program
*He's givin all the folks who will be running against him in '08 (both dem and Repub) ammunition
*He is reminding people what we would have had in office had he won in 2004

The first rule of how to get out of a hole?

Stop Digging.

3 times as of today. The latest time in writing, though it should be short work to quote THAT out of context as well. The thing is, as Andrew Foster Altschul points out (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-foster-altschul/great-apology-senator-ke_b_33000.html) going after Kerry for this has forced the GOP to keep bringing up the Iraq war, which they've been loathe to do in this last week. It's possible the horse-faced humorless bas***d is smarter than we think.

Kerry has finally apologized to the troops. In a Kerry sort of way, anyway.

His initial "apologies" were along the lines of "I'm sorry if you misunderstood me", instead of "I said something that was unclear, let me clarify". While it may seem a small point, the difference is large. He didn't say he was sorry for what he said, he said he was sorry for what you thought you might have heard. It wasn't until this afternoon that he finally listened to all of his Party members that he realized that he screwed up by not apologizing earlier. When John Murtha(!) says you screwed up, alarms should go off in your head.

The reality is that in the 24-hour news world we live in, the soundbite is king. Kerry got bitten before "I voted for the $87 billion, before I voted against it". You would think he would have learned from that episode, but he clearly didn't.

Is it nitpicking? Sure. Is it being well overplayed in the Media and on talk radio? Of course. But so was the Trent Lott comments that the Dems made him resign over, Allen's "macacca" comment, the list goes on.

Leave the jokes to John Stewart, Mr. Kerry.

Has an APOLOGIES OF THE WEEK segment in his radio show, and he routinely uses the phrase "leave the humor to the experts" because so many apologies spring from situations like this. Sage advice.

how brilliant our troops are!

I remember watching during the coverage of the war when the troops were headed to Bagdad, and the media was embedded. I was so impressed on how well spoken and educated they were.

They are indeed.