Reminiscent of the 2004 presidential race, Sen. John Kerry has stepped in it again. Speaking to a crowd of college students, he said that if they didn’t study hard, they would “get stuck in Iraq.” Open mouth, insert foot. To say that he made a bad choice of words would be an understatement — and with mid-term elections a week away. Ouch.

And as you could guess, the GOP and the “President” had a field day with his blunder. Did he just botch the Democrats chances at the polls next week? I wouldn’t put it past the American populace to punish the entire Democratic party — and in turn, themselves — by reelecting the Republicans.

Don’t get me wrong, these were insensitive words and he should apologize but you’d have to be pretty stupid to believe what the White House is saying he actually meant. To think that Kerry — a war veteran himself and a leading Washington advocate for veteran’s right’s — would be any less than sympathetic to American troops would be ludicrous. This is a classic Republican diversion tactic of changing the subject to avoid accountability. Suddenly the debate has shifted from a meandering and disastrous military policy to the insensitive words of a Massachusetts senator.

Think back a few weeks when the Democrats pounced on Foley for his antics. It took less than a week for Republican leaders to criticize the Democrats for being insensitive and accuse them of “gay bashing” and being against gay people in general. Huh? (By the way, let’s not forget that it’s the Republican party that’s pushing for a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Oh, and while we’re off on a tangent let’s mention how the “right to life” party opposes a stem cell research bill that would extend and save lives. Sorry, that one still pisses me off.)

And let’s go back a little farther to the classic gem from the 2000 presidential race. You know the one, right? That’s when Al Gore garnered 540,000 more votes than Bush. Anyway, Carl Rove and the Bush campaign machine took a Gore quote, twisted the words around, concocted a lie, and used it against him. Remember? Gore was speaking to the fact that he sponsored a senate bill that eventually became the High Performance Computing Act of 1991. This Act allocated $600 million for the creation of the National Research and Education Network and arrange a multi-industry consortium to accelerate the development and deployment of networking that would eventually become the world-wide web. After his words were tossed into the Republicrat’s Lie-O-Matic machine, out came the result: ‘Haha, Al Gore said he invented the Internet. What a dummy.’

Anyway, back to Emperor Bush’s insistence that Kerry apologize for his comment. He did, which is good. So now, since we are all in full-on apology mode, how about some bigger apologies that’s long overdue. It’s time for Bush to apologize to the American people for lying to them and taking our country to war. It’s time for him to apologize to the American people for spying on them and lying to them about it. It’s time for him to apologize to the American troops for sending them to an unjustifiable war. It’s time for him to apologize to the mothers of the fallen soldiers for sending their sons and daughters to their deaths. And it’s time for him to apologize to the American people for wiping his ass with the Constitution.