Speaking in Georgia about an hour ago, president Bush intentionally distorted John Kerry's earlier comments about Iraq. Yesterday, speaking at Pasadena City College, Kerry said this:

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, 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."

The explanation is that he meant to say this:

"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."

Under that explanation, the ones who are uneducated are not our troops, but those in the Bush administration.

While that puts me on the same side as Taylor Marsh (who?), I strongly favor this interpretation, and not the interpretation offered by GOP hacks (instapundit . com/archives/033663.php) (also:
instapundit . com/archives/033659.php
captainsquartersblog . com/mt/archives/008401.php
usnews . com/usnews/opinion/baroneblog/archives/061031/whos_in_the_mil.htm
hughhewitt.townhall . com/g/1d217e82-5d9c-4110-807f-70d47be86d97
wizbangblog . com/2006/10/31/john-kerrys-opinion-of-our-military-men-and-women.php
outsidethebeltway . com/archives/2006/10/john_kerry_get_an_education_or_get_stuck_in_iraq)

Here's Kerry video reply [see update].

There's dirty campaigning, and then there's being outright misleading to your readers. Hopefully those who didn't learn about this BushBot tactic in 2004 will remember it now and will remember who's engaging in it.

UPDATE: Insty continues to push what is clearly a lie. Note also that his first link above goes to hotlineblog.nationaljournal . com/archives/2006/10/bush_slams_kerr_1.html. While I don't quote everything here either, one might expect Insty to have quoted this bit:

Do Republicans really believe that Kerry wasn't talking about Pres. Bush? (We believe that Kerry was referring to Bush because he's used a similar formulation in our presence before and quite clearly meant to call Bush a dummy.)

4/11/12 UPDATE: I redid the list of hacks above to neuter any links to them. Also, Kerry's reply video (apparently a statement on CNN) was deleted. However, you can read his statement here: en.wikinews . org/wiki/American_politician,_John_Kerry,_apologizes_for_Iraq_war_remark