WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 — Senator John Kerry tried this afternoon to put what he called a “poorly stated joke” behind him for good, offering an apology for anything he said on Monday that might have been interpreted as an insult to American troops in Iraq.
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“As a combat veteran, I want to make it clear to anyone in uniform and to their loves ones: my poorly stated joke at a rally was not about, and never intended to refer to any troop,” Mr. Kerry said in a statement. “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.”
The Massachusetts Democrat, his party’s standard-bearer in the 2004 presidential race and considered a likely candidate for the nomination in 2008, was trying to get past a furor that erupted after his remarks on Monday at a Democratic rally in Pasadena City, Calif. With the Congressional elections less than a week away, Republicans have pounced on Mr. Kerry’s remarks to try to gain a political advantage.
At the rally, Mr. Kerry said: “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.”
On Tuesday, the White House and the Republicans asserted that Mr. Kerry had insulted the troops, Mr. Kerry explained that he botched a joke that his aides said had been prepared as follows: “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.”
But Republicans continued to take advantage of Mr. Kerry’s gaffe, as President Bush himself and numerous other Republicans asserted that Mr. Kerry owed America’s military people an apology.
Early on, Mr. Kerry said he would tender no apology to the president, Vice President Dick Cheney or various “right-wing nut jobs” he accused of deliberately distorting his remarks. He seemed furious at any suggestion that he, a decorated Vietnam veteran, would utter a careless antimilitary slur.
But with Republicans continuing to deride him today, and with several Democratic candidates in the midterm elections distancing themselves from him, Mr. Kerry finally apologized this afternoon — without softening his criticism of the Bush administration.
“It is clear the Republican Party would rather talk about anything but their failed security policy,” Mr. Kerry said. “I don’t want my verbal slip to be a diversion from the real issues. I will continue to fight for a change of course to provide real security for our country, and a winning strategy for our troops.”
In lashing back at his critics on Tuesday, Mr. Kerry alluded to the largely unsubstantiated attacks on his military record that hampered his campaign in 2004. His slow response to those attacks was widely viewed as a mistake, one that he seemed determined not to repeat this time.
Whether the current dust-up will hurt Mr. Kerry if he does indeed run for president again will not be known for a while, although he conceded on Tuesday that he may think twice before attempting jokes in public. Mr. Cheney, meanwhile, could not resist his own dart. “He was for the joke before he was against it,” Mr. Cheney said.
