Kerry.

This is coolbert:

 Yes, he did say it. John F. Kerry did say it.

"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."

Read what a firestorm this comment has caused.

Was this:

A prepared statement "mangled in delivery"?

Taken out of context?

Poorly worded?

Not what he meant?

NO!!

It would seem to me that Kerry is disparaging the intelligence of the U.S. military service man and woman.

I think the inference is quite clear. If you are college material, you go to school, study hard, do well, and life will be good for you. If you are not college material, you go into the Army [that is the only alternative??], you go to Iraq, and get killed or maimed. The less intelligent among our citizens go into the army and end up in Iraq.

It also seems that Kerry will not apologize.

And his reasoning for a lack of apology is that he was referring to President Bush, not the students he was speaking to. That the President, while in college at Yale, was not a good student, or got good grades, or was an intellectual going to a school were the intellect is stressed. Kerry is trying to say that when you [President Bush] do not do well in school, sending U.S. forces to Iraq is the consequence.

Please keep in mind that Senator Kerry was not a scholar by any means himself. Is also a Yale grad, but was ONLY a "C" student, as was President Bush.

It also seems to me that Senator Kerry is living forty years in the past. During the Vietnam War, it was perceived that only those who were stupid or mental dullards were drafted and sent to Vietnam. That is not so. It is true that if you were an undergrad or grad student in college at the time, you could get a deferment from the draft very easily. Done by a lot. Those that were high school dropouts, high school grads working and not going to school, or persons not in grad school but already a college grad, WERE targets for the draft.

And Project 100,000 was in effect too. Persons whose proficiency tests were so poor that ordinarily they would not be considered for the draft WERE drafted. The manpower shortage was so acute at the time. Persons who NEVER could have been considered college material were drafted and quite often sent to Vietnam.

That was the military situation that existed forty years ago. BUT NOT NOW!!

Military personnel now on active duty and serving in Iraq are for the most part of above average intelligence. AND NOT DRAFTED and forced against their will to go. WE HAVE now and have had for decades an all-volunteer military. Persons that are more highly trained. To do the job [soldier] by modern standards you cannot be BELOW average in intelligence.

Whatever was the intent of Senator Kerry in saying what he did, he really did BOTCH IT!

[my own personal opinion is that Senator Kerry DOES consider the active military personnel to be "saps" and persons deserving of contempt. His true sentiments are that anyone in the military when they could be in college is "foolish" and probably lacking in intelligence.]

I hope that is NOT his true feelings and sentiments, but I fear it to be so!

coolbert.