"Republicans want to debate straw men because they’re afraid to debate real men"

John Kerry responds to the brouhaha caused by his attempt at a Bush joke:

“If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they’re crazy. This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did.

I’m not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq. It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.

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.

Bottom line, these Republicans want to debate straw men because they’re afraid to debate real men. And this time it won’t work because we’re going to stay in their face with the truth and deny them even a sliver of light for their distortions. No Democrat will be bullied by an administration that has a cut and run policy in Afghanistan and a stand still and lose strategy in Iraq.”

Here's the "joke" along with an oldie but goodie from Dear Leader:


Obviously, John should leave the jokes to the guy who spells John without an "h" (hint: he's really, really short). And George? He should just fucking resign already.

Here's how The Rude Pundit sees it:

The Republican President of the United States regularly "misspeaks", where he ends up admitting things like that his job is to "catapult the propaganda" about issues and comparing his brush-clearing injuries with those of wounded soldiers when he said, "As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself—not here at the hospital, but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won. The cedar gave me a little scratch," and the mainstream media ignores such statements as minor slips of the tongue, not indicative of the character of the man or the content of his policies, but explodes with massive coverage of a tripped-up joke by Democratic Senator John Kerry, deciding that a decorated war vet must hate the troops for trying to say that the President is a hunched-over baboon.

Is there any crime that can't be deflected, any ethical lapse that can't be denied, any standard to which the Republicans can be held? We're beyond accountability. We're into some bizarro Nixonian region of plausible deniability.