Spineless Kerry Caves In To A Storm In A Teacup

Across the Atlantic Ocean in the United States of America this past Monday, the Democrat Senator and former presidential candidate John Kerry found himself at the centre of a farcical row over a joke he made to students at the University of California about studying hard if they do not want to find themselves "stuck in Iraq". Although Kerry’s joke was targeted at the present Bush administration’s flawed policies over Iraq, this did not prevent desperate and overacting Republicans from spinning it into an insult against U.S. military forces in the Middle East.

Confronted by the dire opinion polls in the run-up to next week’s mid-term Congressional elections, the Republican are desperately grasping at straws to improve their chances of survival before polling day, thus explaining the current ‘controversy’ over Kerry’s joke. This episode just serves to prove how right the former professional wrestler “Ultimate” Warrior was when he claimed that there were scumbags with "jelly spines and mush minds" on each side of the political divide.

Remaining on the subject of spines, Kerry himself proved how he lacked one by apologising for the joke when no apology was needed. As a former military man himself, does any sensible human being for a moment believe that Kerry would mock his own nation’s armed service personnel who are risking their lives to rebuild Iraq after decades of oppression under the tyranny of Saddam Hussein? As has been already noted, Kerry’s joke was aimed at the White House, not the military.

This whole saga has demonstrated John Kerry at both his best and worst. Kerry made an excellent point about the flawed post-war strategy (or lack of any at all) of the Bush presidency, but undermined it by retracting it under pressure from hypersensitive Republicans. Apart from the usual socialist hypocrisy for which he stands for (and until this week, his lack of personality), it is no wonder Kerry lost to Dubya two years ago and would most likely again in two years time (providing he even emerges as the Democrat’s presidential candidate in the forthcoming primaries).