Saddam Hussein Executed Yesterday

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein struggled briefly after American military guards handed him over to Iraqi executioners before dawn Saturday. But as his final moments approached and masked executioners slipped a black cloth and noose around his neck, he grew calm.

In a final moment of defiance, he refused a hood to cover his eyes.

Hours after Saddam faced the same fate he was accused of inflicting on countless thousands during a quarter-century of ruthless power, Iraqi state television showed grainy video of what it said was his body, the head uncovered and the neck twisted at a sharp angle.

A man whose testimony helped lead to Saddam's conviction and execution before sunrise said he was shown the body because "everybody wanted to make sure that he was really executed."

"Now, he is in the garbage of history," said Jawad Abdul-Aziz, who lost his father, three brothers and 22 cousins in the reprisal killings that followed a botched 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam in the Shiite town of Dujail.

The post-execution footage showed the man identified as Saddam lying on a stretcher, covered in a white shroud. His neck and part of the shroud have what appear to be bloodstains. His eyes are closed.

Al-Arabiya satellite television reported Saturday night that a delegation including the governor of Salahuddin Province and the head of Saddam's clan retrieved his body from Baghdad and took it for burial near the executed dictator's hometown of Tikrit. The broadcaster reported the burial would take place Sunday. The report could not immediately be verified.

Earlier, in Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Sadr City, hundreds of people danced in the streets while others fired guns in the air to celebrate. Some hanged an effigy of Saddam. The government did not impose a round-the-clock curfew as it did last month when Saddam was convicted to thwart any surge in retaliatory violence.

It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader who had vexed three U.S. presidents. Despite his ouster, Washington, its allies and the new Iraqi leaders remain mired in a fight to quell a stubborn insurgency by Saddam loyalists and a vicious sectarian conflict.

The execution took place during the year's deadliest month for U.S. troops, with the toll reaching 109. At least 2,998 members of the U.S. military have been killed since the Iraq war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

President Bush said in a statement issued from his ranch in Texas that bringing Saddam to justice "is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror."

He said that the execution marks the "end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops" and cautioned that Saddam's death will not halt the violence in Iraq.

Within hours of his death, bombings killed at least 68 people in Iraq, including one planted on a minibus that exploded in a fish market in a mostly Shiite town south of Baghdad.

Ali Hamza, a 30-year-old university professor, said he went outside to shoot his gun into the air after he learned of Saddam's death.

"Now all the victims' families will be happy because Saddam got his just sentence," said Hamza, who lives in Diwaniyah, a Shiite town 80 miles south of Baghdad.

But people in the Sunni-dominated city of Tikrit, once a power base of Saddam, lamented his death.

"The president, the leader Saddam Hussein is a martyr and God will put him along with other martyrs. Do not be sad nor complain because he has died the death of a holy warrior," said Sheik Yahya al-Attawi, a cleric at the Saddam Big Mosque.

Police blocked the entrances to Tikrit and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four days. Despite the security precaution, gunmen took to the streets of Tikrit, carrying pictures of Saddam, shooting into the air, and calling for vengeance.

Security forces also set up roadblocks at the entrance to another Sunni stronghold, Samarra, and a curfew was imposed after about 500 people took to the streets protesting the execution of Saddam.

A couple hundred people also protested the execution just outside the Anbar capital of Ramadi, and more than 2,000 people demonstrated in Adwar, the village south of Tikrit where Saddam was captured by U.S. troops hiding in an underground bunker.

In a statement, Saddam's lawyers said that in the aftermath of his death, "the world will know that Saddam Hussein lived honestly, died honestly, and maintained his principles."

"He did not lie when he declared his trial null," they said.

Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, were not hanged along with their former leader as originally planned. Officials wanted to reserve the occasion for Saddam alone.

"We wanted him to be executed on a special day," National Security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told state-run al-Iraqiya television.

Sami al-Askari, the political adviser of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, told the AP that Saddam initially resisted when he was taken by Iraqi guards but was composed in his final moments.

He said Saddam was clad in a black suit, hat and shoes, rather than prison garb. His hat was removed and his hands tied shortly before the noose was slipped around his neck.

Saddam repeated a prayer after a Sunni Muslim cleric who was present.

"Saddam later was taken to the gallows and refused to have his head covered with a hood," al-Askari said. "Before the rope was put around his neck, Saddam shouted: 'God is great. The nation will be victorious and Palestine is Arab.'"

Iraqi state television showed footage of guards in ski masks placing a noose around Saddam's neck. Saddam appeared calm as he stood on the metal framework of the gallows. The footage cuts off just before the execution.

Saddam was executed at a former military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah, al-Askari said. During his regime, Saddam had numerous dissidents executed in the facility, located in a neighborhood that is home to the Iraqi capital's most important Shiite shrine - the Imam Kazim shrine.

The Iraqi prime minister's office released a statement that said Saddam's execution was a "strong lesson" to ruthless leaders who commit crimes against their own people.

"We strongly reject considering Saddam as a representative of any sect in Iraq because the tyrant only represented his evil soul," the statement said. "The door is still open for those whose hands are not tainted with the blood of innocent people to take part in the political process and work on rebuilding Iraq."

The execution came 56 days after a court convicted Saddam and sentenced him to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from Dujail. Iraq's highest court rejected Saddam's appeal Monday and ordered him executed within 30 days.

A U.S. judge on Friday refused to stop Saddam's execution, rejecting a last-minute court challenge.

U.S. troops cheered as news of Saddam's execution appeared on television at the mess hall at Forward Operating Base Loyalty in eastern Baghdad. But some soldiers expressed doubt that Saddam's death would be a significant turning point for Iraq.

"First it was weapons of mass destruction. Then when there were none, it was that we had to find Saddam. We did that, but then it was that we had to put him on trial," said Spc. Thomas Sheck, 25, who is on his second tour in Iraq. "So now, what will be the next story they tell us to keep us over here?"

At his death, he was in the midst of a second trial, charged with genocide and other crimes for a 1987-88 military crackdown that killed an estimated 180,000 Kurds in northern Iraq. Experts said the trial of his co-defendants was likely to continue despite his execution.

Many people in Iraq's Shiite majority were eager to see the execution of a man whose Sunni Arab-dominated regime oppressed them and Kurds. Before the hanging, a mosque preacher in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Friday called Saddam's execution "God's gift to Iraqis."

In a farewell message to Iraqis posted Wednesday on the Internet, Saddam said he was giving his life for his country as part of the struggle against the U.S. "Here, I offer my soul to God as a sacrifice, and if he wants, he will send it to heaven with the martyrs," he said.

One of Saddam's lawyers, Issam Ghazzawi, said the letter was written by Saddam on Nov. 5, the day he was convicted by an Iraqi tribunal in the Dujail killings.

Najeeb al-Nauimi, a member of Saddam's legal team, said U.S. authorities maintained physical custody of Saddam until the execution to prevent him being humiliated publicly or his corpse being mutilated, as has happened to previous Iraqi leaders deposed by force. He said they didn't want anything to happen to further inflame Sunni Arabs.

"This is the end of an era in Iraq," al-Nauimi said from Doha, Qatar. "The Baath regime ruled for 35 years. Saddam was vice president or president of Iraq during those years. For Iraqis, he will be very well remembered. Like a martyr, he died for the sake of his country."

Iraq's death penalty was suspended by the U.S. military after it toppled Saddam in 2003, but the new Iraqi government reinstated it two years later, saying executions would deter criminals.

Saddam's own regime used executions and extrajudicial killings as a tool of political repression, both to eliminate real or suspected political opponents and to maintain a reign of terror.

In the months after he seized power on July 16, 1979, he had hundreds of members of his own party and army officers slain. In 1996, he ordered the slaying of two sons-in-law who had defected to Jordan but returned to Baghdad after receiving guarantees of safety.

Saddam built Iraq into a one of the Arab world's most modern societies, but then plunged the country into an eight-year war with neighboring Iran that killed hundreds of thousands of people on both sides and wrecked Iraq's economy.

When the U.S. invaded in 2003, Iraqis had been transformed from among the region's most prosperous people to some of its most impoverished.

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For the many murders of his own people; Hussein deserved the sentence of death. However, George W. Bush's excuse for invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam was a lie. George Bush should be brought up on charges for lying to the American people and he should be made to answer for the deaths of every American and every Iraqi who has died because of his lies. Impeach George W. Bush.

A Young U.S. Marine Speaks Out

A Young Marine Speaks Out
By Philip Martin

I'm sick and tired of this patriotic, nationalistic and fascist crap. I stood through a memorial service today for a young Marine that was killed in Iraq back in April. During this memorial a number of people spoke about the guy and about his sacrifice for the country. How do you justify 'sacrificing' your life for a war which is not only illegal, but is being prosecuted to the extent where the only thing keeping us there is one man's power, and his ego. A recent Marine Corps intelligence report that was leaked said that the war in the al-Anbar province is unwinnable. It said that there was nothing we could do to win the hearts and minds, or the military operations in that area. So I wonder, why are we still there? Democracy is not forced upon people at gunpoint. It's the result of forward thinking individuals who take the initiative and risks to give their fellow countrymen a better way of life.

When I joined I took an oath. In that oath I swore to protect the Constitution of the United States. I didn't swear to build democracies in countries on the other side of the world under the guise of "national security." I didn't join the military to be part of an Orwellian ("1984") war machine that is in an obligatory war against whoever the state deems the enemy to be so that the populace can be controlled and riled up in a pro-nationalistic frenzy to support any new and oppressive law that will be the key to destroying the enemy. Example given � the Patriot Act. So aptly named, and totally against all that the constitution stands for. President Bush used the reactionary nature of our society to bring our country together and to infuse into the national psyche a need to give up their little-used rights in the hope to make our nation a little safer. The same scare tactics he used to win elections. He drones on and on about how America and the world would be a less safe place if we weren't killing Iraqis, and that we'd have to fight the terrorists at home if we weren't abroad. In our modern day emotive society this strategy (or strategery?) works, or had worked, up until last month's elections.

My point in this; to show that America was never nationalistic. If anything they were Statalistic (giving their allegiance to the state of their residence). This is shown in the fact that the founders created states with fully capable and independent governments and not provinces that were just a division of the federal government. These men believed that America was a place where imperialistic values would be non-existent. Where the people trying to make their lives better by working hard, thinking, inventing and using the free market would tie up so much of normal life that imperialistic colonization and the fighting of wars thousands of miles away for interests that are not our own would be avoided. They believed this expansion of power could be left to the European nations, the England, France and Spain of their time. However this recent, and current influx of nationalistic feeling has created an environment where giving up your rights, going to a foreign country to fight a people who did not ask for us to be there, nor did their leader do anything to warrant us being there, and dying would be considered honorable and heroic. I don't believe it anymore. I don't believe it's right for any American to go along with it anymore. Yes I know that we in the military are bound by the UCMJ and somehow don't fall under the Constitution (the very thing we're suppose to be defending) but sooner or later there is a decision that every American soldier, marine, airmen and seamen makes to allow themselves to be sent to a war that is against every fiber this country was founded on. I know that when April rolls around I will be thinking long and hard on that decision. Even though we in the military are just doing as we're told we still have the moral and ethical obligation to choose to do as we're told, or to say, "No, that isn't right." I believe that if more troopers like me and the professional military, the officers and commanders, start standing up and saying that they won't let themselves or their troops go to this illegal war people will start standing up and realizing what the heck is going on over there.

The sad fact of the matter is that we are not fighting terrorists in Iraq. We are fighting the Iraqi people who feel like a conquered and occupied people. Personally I have a hard time believing that if I was an Iraqi that I wouldn't be doing everything in my power to kill and maim as many Americans as possible. I know that the vast majority of Americans would not be happy with the Canadian government, or any other foreign government, liberating us from the clutches of George W. Bush, even though a large number of us would like that, and forcing us to accept their system of government. Would not millions of Americans rise up and fight back? Would you not rise up to protect and defend your house and your neighborhood if someone invaded your country? But we send thousands of troops to a foreign country to do just that. How is it moral to fight a people who are just trying to defend their homes and families? I think next time I go to Iraq perhaps I should wear a bright red coat and carry a Brown Bess instead of my digitalized utilities and M16.

Notice I never once used the word homeland in any of this. I have a secondary point I want to bring up now. Never once was the term homeland ever used to describe the country of America until Mr. Bush began the department of homeland security after the 9/11 attacks. Taking a 20th century history class will teach us that the most notable countries in the last century that referred to their country in this way were Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Hitler used the term fatherland to drum up support, nationalistic support, for his growing war machine. He used the nationalism he created in the minds of the Germans to justify the sacrifice of their livelihood to build the war machine to get back their power from the oppressive restrictions the English and French had put on them at Versailles. This is the same feeling that has been virulently infecting the American psyche in the last hundred years. This is the same feeling that consoles a mother after her son is killed in an attempt to prosecute an aggressor's war 10,000 miles away. It's also known as Patriotism these days, but I say, "No more." No more nationalistic inanity, no more passing it off as patriotism. Patriotism is learning, and educating oneself to understand what their country really stands for.

I heard a lot during the memorial service about how the dead Marine did so much good for others and how his helping others was like a little microcosm of America helping because we have the power to do so. Well if we have the power to help people why aren't we helping in Darfur where hundreds of thousands of people have died in the last 10 years. Saddam was convicted and sentenced to death for killing 143 Shiites who conspired to assassinate him. (I know all you "patriotic" Americans would be calling for the heads of anyone who conspired to assassinate supreme leader Bush). And yet we spend upwards of 1 trillion dollars and nearing 3,000 lives to help these Iraqis when they don't even want us there. Not to mention we don't have the legal justification to be there. I guess we should wait around for the omnipotent W Bush to decide who we should use our superpowerdom to help next. It's about time to throw him and the rest of the fascists out. Moreover it's about time to start educating Americans about their past and history, and letting them know that imperialistic leaders are not what the founders of this great country wanted.
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This is happening more and more often. Young people questioning the motives of their government. Asking themselves and their leaders "WHY?"
The traditional soldier never questions the motives of his county's leaders. This is ideal in a soldier if he is to be an efficient fighting tool of the civil government.
When soldiers begin to ask that question, the end is near. I'm not saying that I believe that a soldier should nver question why he's fighting the "enemy" that his Commander In Chief indicates, but when he DOES begin to ask, the end of that unquestioned authority is near an end.

The US has been in Iraq longer than we fought WW2, and the casualties are mounting with no indicator on how long these young people are going to have to watch their comrades and buddies die for something it's very hard for any rational person to grasp. They are beginning to realize they were lied to. Lied to about why they are there and lied to about the way the conflict would be settled.

Mr. Bush, please bring these children home to us. Please end this senseless killing. Let the Iraqui people settle this in their own way. The US doesn't want to support another corrupt regime in Iraq as we did in Viet Nam. We would gladly rather have electric automobiles than our children dead and maimed. We can overcome the petroleum shortage. We can live without many of the luxuries we have taken for granted in this country. Just bring the soldiers home to us so we can sleep peacefully again.

Couldn't the billions spent in the senseless Iraqui conflict feed some of the estimated 3 million children in our own country who go to sleep hungry every night? Or supply heating and medical relief for the elderly and for the disabled? Or save medicare?

We are not the world's police force. We are not entitled to more than our fair share of the petroleum supplies in the world. Bring the children home. We don't even ask you to admit you lied to us. We don't care if you have no remorse for what has happened. Bring the soldiers home.

Another History Lesson Lost in Iraq

WASHINGTON -
President Bush meets with British Prime Minister
Tony Blair at the White House today, a day after the release of the
Iraq study group's report.
ADVERTISEMENT

President Bush faces urgent pressure to find a fresh strategy in Iraq as a new defense secretary heads to the
Pentagon and a scathing bipartisan commission report says his war policies have failed and that "time is running out."

The Iraq Study Group's report said the situation in Iraq was "grave and deteriorating" after nearly four years of bloodshed and more than 2,900 American deaths. The report gave weight to the president's talks on Thursday with Blair, his closest ally in the unpopular war.

Bush, possibly with counsel from Blair, could embrace some or all 79 of the Iraq Study Group's recommendations. The president also could ignore them and chart his own new course based on internal reviews being done at the Pentagon, State Department and the White House.

"It's clear that the present situation is not one that could be sustained or accepted," White House press secretary Tony Snow said Wednesday.

The panel's recommendations ranged from gradually withdrawing U.S. combat forces during the next year to ramping up the training of Iraqi security forces to enlisting diplomatic help from Iraq's neighbors — not only to resolve problems in Iraq but to find an end to the long-running conflict between
Israel and the Palestinians.

The White House was cautious not to specifically reject any of the group's ideas outright and vowed that Bush would entertain suggestions from all political circles before charting a new way forward.

But the president already has rejected the idea of direct talks with
Iran and
Syria. The administration continues to insist that Iran verifiably suspend uranium enrichment before the United States would start direct talks, although Snow left the door open for discussions through an outside group.

"There's some very good ideas in there," Bush said about the report after meeting Wednesday afternoon with lawmakers. "Not all of us around the table agree with every idea, but we do agree that it shows that bipartisan consensus on important issues is possible."

When a reporter asked whether Bush was capable of making dramatic changes in his war plan, Snow said: "Well, you're assuming that the president has to pull U-turns. I'm not sure I agree."

Democrats, meanwhile, clamored for change.

"I'm encouraged," said Rep. Jane Harman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., "and I feel the stay-the-course strategy is officially dead."

"The American people have spoken," said incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "The Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group has spoken. They have all demanded a change of course in Iraq, and the Bush administration must listen."

Sen. Charles Schumer (news, bio, voting record), D-N.Y., said the key question was whether Bush was ready for a change of course.

"All eyes now are on this president," Schumer said.

Bush's national security adviser,
Stephen Hadley, has said Bush would make his decision within weeks.

"We believe that the situation in Iraq today is very, very serious," said James A. Baker III, the former Republican secretary of state who led the panel jointly with former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind. "We do not know if it can be turned around."

While the panel concluded that a stable, democratic Iraq was still possible, its pessimistic assessment of the situation contrasted with Bush's upbeat prediction that the U.S.-led coalition was on the road to victory.

"We're winning, and we will win, unless we leave before the job is done," Bush said at a White House news conference on Oct. 25.

The White House insists that Bush will not outsource his decision-making on Iraq, yet the changing political landscape would seem to make it difficult for him not to embrace or — at least seriously consider — opposing views.

"The politics have shifted so this report now becomes the default position for many in the public and many in political life," said Jon B. Alterman, a former State Department official who specialized in the Middle East.

"The president now isn't the one defining the terms of the debate. He's responding to a debate that others have framed, and a debate that others have framed on some terms that he has said are unacceptable.

"What I think is striking is that the president has said that defeat is not an option," said Alterman, now director of Mideast programs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "And what this report says is that defeat is a real possibility."

Leon Panetta, a Democratic member of the Iraq Study Group, said Bush needs to unify an America divided by the war.

"I think the president understands that he simply is not going to be able to proceed with whatever policy changes he wants to implement if we're divided," Panetta said. "That is the principal goal, in my mind, that he has to accomplish."
___________________________________________________________________

If this doesn't reek of Viet Nam, nothing does. So blind to History's lessons. I am reminded of something the novelist George Sand said:

The truth is always simple, but usually we arrive at it by the most complicated way."

Amen to that.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Open And Fair List Of Demands From Michael Moore

This is what we demand:

1. Bring the troops home now. Not six months from now. NOW. Quit looking
for a way to win. We can't win. We've lost. Sometimes you lose. This is one
of those times. Be brave and admit it.

2. Apologize to our soldiers and make amends. Tell them we are sorry they
were used to fight a war that had NOTHING to do with our national security.
We must commit to taking care of them so that they suffer as little as
possible. The mentally and physically maimed must get the best care and
significant financial compensation. The families of the deceased deserve
the biggest apology and they must be taken care of for the rest of their
lives.

3. We must atone for the atrocity we have perpetuated on the people of
Iraq. There are few evils worse than waging a war based on a lie, invading
another country because you want what they have buried under the ground.
Now many more will die. Their blood is on our hands, regardless for whom we
voted. If you pay taxes, you have contributed to the three billion dollars
a week now being spent to drive Iraq into the hellhole it's become. When
the civil war is over, we will have to help rebuild Iraq. We can receive no
redemption until we have atoned.

In closing, there is one final thing I know. We Americans are better than
what has been done in our name. A majority of us were upset and angry after
9/11 and we lost our minds. We didn't think straight and we never looked at
a map. Because we are kept stupid through our pathetic education system and
our lazy media, we knew nothing of history. We didn't know that WE were the
ones funding and arming Saddam for many years, including those when he
massacred the Kurds. He was our guy. We didn't know what a Sunni or a
Shiite was, never even heard the words. Eighty percent of our young adults
(according to National Geographic) were not able to find Iraq on the map.
Our leaders played off our stupidity, manipulated us with lies, and scared
us to death.

But at our core we are a good people. We may be slow learners, but that
"Mission Accomplished" banner struck us as odd, and soon we began to ask
some questions. Then we began to get smart. By this past November 7th, we
got mad and tried to right our wrongs. The majority now know the truth. The
majority now feel a deep sadness and guilt and a hope that somehow we can
make make it all right again.

Unfortunately, we can't. So we will accept the consequences of our actions
and do our best to be there should the Iraqi people ever dare to seek our
help in the future. We ask for their forgiveness.

We demand the Democrats listen to us and get out of Iraq now.

Yours,

Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
mmflint@aol.com

______________________________________
Stats thus far:

US Military Deaths (Iraq) - 2,900
US Military Wounded (Iraq) - 21,778
Iraqui Civilian Deaths (Min) - 49, 235
"Excess" Iraqui Deaths - 655,000
_______________________________________
It's a fair and honest list. It's a fair and accurate assessment of who we are as the American people. It's an acccurate assessment of a dishonest war. It's fair to our troops and it's fair to the people in Iraq whom we have wronged.
Get us out of Iraq, now, Mr. Bush.

GOP Is Getting Desperate

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. John Kerry apologized Wednesday for a "poorly stated joke," which the Massachusetts senator says was aimed at the president but was widely perceived as a slam on U.S. troops.

"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," he said in a written statement.

"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 [was] never intended to refer to any troop," he said.

In the statement, the four-term senator continued to assert that the GOP was using the gaffe to distract voters from its own shortcomings.

"It is clear the Republican Party would rather talk about anything but their failed security policy," he said. "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 White House quickly issued a response, saying, "Sen. Kerry's apology to the troops for his insulting comments came late, but it was the right thing to do."

Kerry canceled plans to campaign for fellow Democrats after the GOP began hammering him over his comments to college students about getting "stuck in Iraq."

President Bush's 2004 presidential rival -- who told a radio host Wednesday he was sorry for what he called a "botched joke" -- will not appear with Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Bob Casey on Wednesday in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a Democratic official said.

"I would be surprised if you see him welcomed out there anywhere," the official said, "and certainly not in a race that is meaningful."

Strategists at both the Democratic House and Senate campaign committees told their candidates the flap is a distraction they don't need right now. (Time.com: John Kerry, still one step behind)

The Democratic official said the issue doesn't appear to change any races, but it may attract more GOP supporters in tight Senate contests in Missouri and Tennessee.
GOP plays offense

Kerry's comments provide an opportunity for Republicans to go on the offensive on national security issues -- a winning GOP strategy in 2002 and 2004 that has been blunted by the increasingly violent situation in Iraq.

The Republican National Committee took advantage of the Kerry gaffe with an ad featuring the text of quotes from Maj. Gen. Thomas Bostick, Sen. John McCain and Bush in support of U.S. troops.

A video clip of Kerry's remarks follows, then the caption, "John Kerry should apologize. Our soldiers are waiting."

Kerry made the comment Monday to students at Pasadena City College in California.

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." (Watch Kerry's "botched joke'" that launched the political stink -- 1:50 )

A Kerry aide said the senator 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."

Appearing Wednesday on radio host Don Imus' program, "Imus in the Morning," Kerry said, "I'm going back to Washington. I'm going back to tackle this, you bet." (Watch Kerry refuse to apologize for criticizing the president and "his broken policy" -- 9:33 )

"Of course, I'm sorry about a botched joke," he added. "Everybody knows I botched a joke."

"They shouldn't be allowed to do that," the Massachusetts lawmaker said. "I'm not going to let these guys lie and smear, and they put their whole machine out to do it, and they ought to apologize."

But White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said the onus was on Kerry to issue an apology, and he rejected the notion that Kerry's remarks to Imus constituted one.

"You and I and everybody in this room have said things that we didn't intend to say," Snow said at a press briefing Wednesday. "And when it offends people, you say, 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say it. I'm wrong.' And he hasn't done that."

Snow said Kerry was "insistent on pointing fingers at the president" and that the senator's remarks did not appear to be in jest.

"If you listen to the tone of voice in which he said them, it's hard to construe them as a joke. It didn't sound like he was trying to make funnies," he said.
Cheney set to enter fray

Kerry's office said two House campaign appearances also have been canceled -- by mutual decision -- so as not to "allow the Republican hate machine to use Democratic candidates as their proxies in their distorted spin war in which once again they're willing to exploit brave American troops."

A Kerry aide said the senator wouldn't go to Minnesota for Democrat Tim Walz, who is trying to unseat Rep. Gil Gutknecht, R-Minnesota, and congressional candidate Bruce Braley of Iowa announced that Kerry would not appear with him either.

Republicans unleashed a firestorm of criticism against Kerry after the Vietnam veteran's remarks.

Vice President Dick Cheney will enter the fray Wednesday night during a speech in Montana. The White House released the portion of Cheney's speech pertaining to Kerry.

"John Kerry needs to learn that the men and women serving in Iraq aren't there because they didn't study hard or do their homework," Cheney is set to say. "They're smart, patriotic, exceptionally well-trained and dedicated to their mission. They are heroes, and they are the pride of the United States of America."

On Tuesday, Bush joined many GOP lawmakers -- including House Majority Leader John Boehner and McCain, a former prisoner of war -- in blasting Kerry. (Watch both sides tussle over Kerry's gaffe -- 3:02 )

"The senator's suggestion that the men and women of our military are somehow uneducated is insulting and shameful," Bush said. "The men and women who serve in our all-volunteer armed forces are plenty smart and are serving because they are patriots -- and Sen. Kerry owes them an apology."

Bush will not face voters again, and Kerry isn't up for re-election this year.

A number of top Democrats said they, too, were upset with the senator for giving the Republicans election-time ammunition -- even if the GOP was hyping the remark.

A top Democratic strategist said Tuesday that Kerry "already cost us one election" and should "keep his mouth shut." Added Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr. of Tennessee on Wednesday, "Whatever the intent, Sen. Kerry was wrong to say what he said. He needs to apologize to our troops."

Democratic candidate Jon Tester, who is in a tight race against Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Montana, said in a statement, "Sen. Kerry's remarks were poorly worded and just plain stupid. He owes our troops and their families an apology."

But not all Democrats concurred. Vietnam veteran and former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia defended Kerry's record of fighting for veterans and applauded the senator for showing "our party how to fight back with the truth."

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, also defended Kerry, telling reporters Wednesday in Burlington, Vermont, "Kerry made a blooper. Bloopers happen," according to The Associated Press.

CNN's John King and Andrea Koppel contributed to this report.

CNN.
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You know ...SO WHAT?!? It certainly isn't like Kerry told a lie. He told the honest truth and I think that's what hurts all the little right wing fascists out there. Leave Kerry alone, Mr. Bush. Sweep before your own door. You have a whole lot of dirt at your own doorstep. You and lots and lots of your fellow Republican cronies.

Larry