The Kerry Kerkuffle Continues

First he said it, then he defended it, then he said it was a "joke" now Kerry's waffleometer is set on spin:

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 never intended to refer to any troop.
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.
It is clear the Republican Party would rather talk about anything but their failed security policy. 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.

First, this is not an apology. He's not saying he's sorry for his actions, he's saying he's sorry if your offended. But no biggie there, let's leave the man some face. What offends me, besides the original offense, is that he thinks ALL AMERICANS are stupid enough to believe that this was merely a poorly told joke taken out of context. I don't believe for a nanosecond that Flipper was trying to make a joke, what we have here is a rare instance where a politician speaks his mind. Why do I say this? Let's look at what Kerry had to say about his fellow servicemen when he returned from his four month tour of Vietnam:

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.