John Kerry Apologizes, Sort Of

Senator John Kerry (D-MA) finally did exactly what he said he would not do. He apologized, sort of. Here are his exact remarks in their entirety:

"As a combat veteran, I want to make it clear to anyone in uniform and to their loved ones: my poorly stated joke at a rally was not about, and never intended to refer to any troop.

I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted (emphasis added) to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform, and I personally apologize to any service member, family member, or American who was offended.

It is clear the Republican Party would rather talk about anything but their failed security policy. 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."
I say he apologized, "sort of" because he puts the burden of the actual error on those of us who heard what he said, rather than on the inappropriateness of his comments. To give him the benefit of the doubt, let's look at his actual comments that started the controversy a few days ago: "You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.” You be the judge, did we misunderstand or did he say something he should regret?

His apology is better than nothing, but probably not much better.