He was for the joke before he was against it.

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. –Democrat Senator John Kerry

And the next day…

My statement yesterday, and the White House knows this full well, was a botched joke about the president and the president’s people, not about the troops… If anyone thinks that a veteran, someone like me who’s been fighting my entire career to provide for veterans to fight for their benefits, to help honor what their service is, if anybody thinks that a veteran would somehow criticize more than 140,000 troops fighting in Iraq and not the president and his people who put them there, they’re crazy.

Call me crazy then, THE WORDS SAY WHAT THEY SAY. Those words contain no mention of the Bush Administration. As a former Air Force F-15 crew chief, I am deeply insulted and would be no matter what side of the isle I’m behind. It’s also embarrassing to realize that this is the person who received 48% of the presidential vote two years ago.

Imagine the brewing shit storm if President Bush had made a “botched joke” along those lines.