There is apparently quite a bit of fallout from the following remark made by Senator Kerry on Monday:
He said: "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."
Part of the fallout involved this clarification:
A Kerry aide said that the prepared statement, which had been designed to criticize Bush, "was mangled in delivery."
Kerry was supposed to say, "I can't overstress the importance of a great education. 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."
Most of the fallout has been criticism of the Senator for saying that members of the armed forces services in Iraq are not smart, despite the clarification.
This fallout is misguided, even focusing on what he said initially. His critics are insisting that the members of the armed forces serving in Iraq are smart. I agree with their assessment, but their examples are not relevant here. These examples falsify the statement:
"If you are serving in Iraq, then you are not smart."
He didn't say this. He said:
"If you are not smart, then you get stuck in Iraq."
To falsify this statement, you need to find people who are not smart who are not stuck in Iraq. It's very easy to do that as well. You could start with people who don't understand the structure of if-then statements who are stuck in the Senate, if you wanted to.