The honorable Senator John Kerry owes an apology to the troops in Iraq specifically, and to the American Armed Services men and women in the world at large. He owes an apology to Americans everywhere. Bear with me here, and I will explain why I'm saying this.

His comments to those at a Democratic rally in southern California were, "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, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq. ..." His remarks were a "botched joke." I believe that. Apparently they were directed at President George Bush and his people, meaning his staff, particularly Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

What he is now saying, in a more or less indirect fashion is that he meant that our 43rd President, George W. Bush, did not in fact study hard, making the most of his education, did not study hard before entering into the war in Iraq, did not make an effort to be smart and therefore got us as a nation stuck in Iraq.

There are some basic questions and some facts that Senator Kerry and we should address.

Question: In the first place, where was the supposed joke?

Fact: Nothing about this war or how we got there is in the least bit humorous.

Fact: The last fact is how Senator Kerry got into trouble here.

Fact: President Bush and Senator Kerry both attended Yale University where President Bush's cumulative grade score was one point higher at 77, than was the Senator's.

Fact: Senator John Kerry has consistently made diminishing remarks about President Bush's intelligence for years now.

Fact: Senator Kerry received a "D" in Political Science from Yale.

After calls for an apology for his "botched joke" he called republicans "nuts" and "hacks" and mentioned that some of them have never stepped up to wear the uniform and serve in a war for their country. Politicians from both sides of the aisle have benefited from a service record. I do not fault Senator Kerry for that. What I do fault him for is the way that he has done it.

I was nine when my brother, ten years my senior got drafted into the United States Army. I was ten when I sat on the edge of my sister's bed, whimpering to an older neighbor girl that I was afraid he would get killed when he got to Vietnam. Her father was a major in the Army who made two tours in Vietnam and who would soon make a third, and she gave me assurance that everything would be alright, and that my brother would come back safely.

My brother did come back safely, though his very best friend from high school lost his life there. We were all relieved when my brother returned, but there had been no film camera following him around during his service in Vietnam. Strangely, there seemed to be one around several times to follow Senator Kerry.

Facts: Senator Kerry made many statements following his brief tour in Vietnam. He has since contradicted some of them. My brother has made extremely few statements following his nearly year-long tour there. Senator Kerry has been talking about it and bringing it up repeatedly since he was there. Now he is indignant because the White House has said an apology fis owed for his statement.

Fact: Whether this was a slam against the troops in Iraq, or whether it was a slam against President Bush and his policies regarding Iraq, it was out of place and in extremely poor taste. I reiterate; an apology here is owed by Senator Kerry to the troops, just by reason of the fact that you shouldn't make jokes about something they are so perilously involved in.

Fact: In his rebuttal, Senator Kerry said that our own intelligence community says that the war in Iraq is actually causing more terroristic activity, and he said that President Bush failed to study what would happen after we went on the offensive in Iraq.

Fact: Senator Kerry said that higher numbers of troops should have been sent to Iraq to get the job done.

I agree, but this from the man who made much of his 2004 presidential campaign bid on a platform for exit strategies from Iraq carries little weight.

You cannot know what will happen precisely in a war, any more than you can in a street fight. There are too many variables. You can study the possibilities, you can weigh troop numbers, but the fact that you become involved always escalates a war. In this case however, with terrorist involvement, and the fact that the terrorist insurgents come from sympathetic countries in unpredictable numbers, you cannot say the enemy has "X" number of soldiers and we need "X" number of soldiers to defeat them.

Terrorists are a different breed of enemy, with a differently motivated agenda against this and other countries. They have to be combated in an unyielding, intelligent and proactive fashion. Talk is cheap, and Senator Kerry did a thorough job both yesterday and today of illustrating that fact.