KERRY APOLOGIZES FOR BOTCHED JOKE
by R. J. Shulman

BOSTON - Senator John Kerry has finally apologized for a joke gone awry in which he said that college students should stay in school and get educated or else they would “end up in Iraq.” This ignited a firestorm of protest in which Presidential Press Secretary Tony Snow said that Kerry owed an apology to the soldiers serving in Iraq as Kerry’s comments implied that our armed forces in Iraq are uneducated losers whose lives were worth less than cannon fodder.

“I am sorry that I botched the joke," Kerry finally said today in an exclusive interview at WHDH-TV in Boston, “I meant to say that if you don’t stay in school and drift into becoming an uneducated moron, you could end up as the President of the United States and send the troops to Iraq believing that their lives were worth less than cannon fodder.”

“I don’t understand what that falsicated purple-hearter is talking about,” said President Bush, “as I graducated from Andover and Yale, and I, and not him ended up as the decider who decides who gets sent over there because their lives are worth less than cannon fodder.” The President added, “at least I’ve been in Iraq to greet the soldiers whose lives are worth less than cannon fodder, while that cut and runner Kerry hasn’t.”

“Would you rather have a leader,” said Vice President Dick Cheney over a secure telephone line from his bunker, “who insults our troops over there or one who insults them over here.”