Medary.com

Forced to cancel numerous campaign appearances, Kerry emerged from foot-in-mouth surgery late yesterday as outraged citizens extracted this statement from his tortured soul:

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 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.

The operation was obviously not a total success. He would have done well to stop at the second paragraph, because the third is the verbal equivalent of crossing his fingers behind his back.