{"id":3085,"date":"2006-11-04T10:48:31","date_gmt":"2006-11-04T17:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/04\/if-they-really-cared\/"},"modified":"2006-11-04T10:48:31","modified_gmt":"2006-11-04T17:48:31","slug":"if-they-really-cared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/04\/if-they-really-cared\/","title":{"rendered":"If they really cared . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Senator John Kerry blew a joke. The context makes it clear he was referring to Mr. Bush when he said, &#8220;<em>If you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don&#8217;t, you get stuck in Iraq<\/em>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Kerry meant to say, &#8220;<em>If you don&#8217;t, you get <strong>US<\/strong> stuck in Iraq, Mr. President<\/em>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>By spinning Kerry&#8217;s flub into an attack on the intelligence of U.S. soldiers rather than on Mr. Bush &#8212; and holding down the &#8220;REPEAT&#8221; key &#8212; it&#8217;s the Republicans, not Kerry, who keep sending the message to the troops, &#8220;<em>If you&#8217;re not smart, you get stuck in Iraq<\/em>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Are these Republicans smart enough to know that message will destroy morale? Do they care? Or is it more important to them to take a cheap-shot in hopes of winning in the up-coming elections?<\/p>\n<p>But will the Democrats, as characterized by Mr. Kerry &#8212; who wanted more troops and a longer stay when he was Mr. Bush&#8217;s opponent in the 2004 presidential race &#8212; get us out of Iraq any faster than their Republican cohorts?<\/p>\n<p>Will either major branch of the war party slap this bumper sticker on their government limos?<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">&#8220;<strong>Support Our Troops: Bring Them Home Now!<\/strong>&#8220;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Senator John Kerry blew a joke. The context makes it clear he was referring to Mr. Bush when he said, &#8220;If you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don&#8217;t, you get stuck in Iraq.&#8221; Mr. Kerry meant to say, &#8220;If [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3085\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3085"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}