Ordinarily we don't talk about what's gong on in the national debate, with the exception of NCLB issues. However, Senator Kerry has opened the door for a different kind of debate, and you, the reader, can decide if you want to join in the debate.

Does not being educated mean you are more likely to be in the military?

Here's what Senator Kerry said verbatim the other day:

“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.”

Regardless of what he "meant to say" he said it. If you make an effort to be smart.... etc....

Is it true? IS the military a bastion for the less educated? What about all those college grads, and service academy grads who are in Iraq right now?

Colin Powell? John McCain? If the sentiment is true that the less educated end up at war and in the military, what does that say about the Senator's own military service?

According to MSNBC, democrats are cancelling their appearances with the Senator.

Is it true, what the Senator says, or is this another "I voted for the war before voting against it" kind of moments?

So let's talk about education and the military...

What does education mean?

How does being less educated end you up in the military?

What do we make of very educated people in the military?

Why would a former presidential candidate from TWO years ago even say such a thing?

Is the military a place for the uneducated, or is it the best educated fighting force of all time?

I welcome your thoughts...the story, from MSNBC, is below.

Kerry cancels campaign events after remarks
Senator won't make appearances with Dem candidates following uproar
MSNBC staff and news service reports

Updated: 7:04 a.m. PT Nov 1, 2006

MANKATO, Minn. - The flap over what Sen. John Kerry calls his “botched joke” has prompted the Democrat to cancel a couple of upcoming appearances over the next two days, campaign officials said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the rhetoric between Kerry and the White House continued to escalate.

Bush’s spokesman pressed Kerry to apologize for a comment Republicans say was disrespectful of U.S. fighting forces in Iraq, saying he “put gasoline on the fire” of an already sizzling midterm election campaign.

“Sen. Kerry may have botched the line, but what he said was insulting to the troops, and what he ought to say is, ‘Look, I botched the line, but I’m sorry for giving offense,’” press secretary Tony Snow said on CBS’s “The Early Show.”

“We’re not the one who whipped this up into a big issue. Sen. Kerry did so yesterday,” said Snow, appearing the day after President Bush and Kerry traded their harshest accusations since the 2004 presidential race.

Kerry fired back on MSNBC-TV, accusing the White House of capitalizing on his misstatement.

“I’m not gonna let these guys distort something completely out of its context solely for the purpose of avoiding responsibility, which is what they’re doing,” Kerry told MSNBC’s Don Imus.

“They’ve taken those words — just like they take words all the time — and they distort them on purpose in order to distract Americans from their policy,” he said. “A hundred young Americans died last month. These guys don’t have a policy.”

Canceled appearances
The Massachusetts senator — and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate — was scheduled to visit Minnesota State University in Mankato to campaign for 1st Congressional District candidate Tim Walz on Wednesday. But the event was cancelled at Kerry's request, according to Meredith Salsbery, a spokeswoman for Walz.

“He wants to make sure the campaign is about the issues we’ve been talking about the last two years,” she said of Kerry’s decision. “It’s important to him that we are able to do that.”

Meantime, in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, candidate Bruce Braley canceled a campaign event scheduled Thursday, saying that the senator’s recent comments about the Iraq war were inappropriate.

Braley, a Democrat, is running against Republican Mike Whalen in Iowa’s 1st District congressional race—a contest considered to be one of the most competitive House races in the country.

Braley spokesman Jeff Giertz said the decision to cancel the event with Kerry was made independently.

Trading jabs
The two parties are searching for any edge amid indications Democrats could take back the House and possibly win control of the Senate in next week’s midterm elections.

Though neither Bush nor Kerry is on any ballot, the bitterness with which they fought each other as 2004 rivals spilled over as both campaign hard for their parties in a race shaped in large measure by public doubts about the Iraq war.

Bush, campaigning later in Georgia, said Kerry’s statement was “insulting and it is shameful.”

“The members of the United States military are plenty smart and they are plenty brave and the senator from Massachusetts owes them an apology,” Bush said during an appearance for a former GOP congressman, Mac Collins, who is trying to oust Democratic Rep. Jim Marshall. There were boos at the mention of Kerry’s name and cheers at Bush’s call for an apology.

‘I apologize to no one’
Kerry, who is considering another run for the White House in 2008, angrily fired back.

At a hastily arranged news conference in Seattle on Tuesday, Kerry said: “I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy.”

Kerry said the comment in question was “a botched joke about the president and the president’s people, not about the troops ... and they know that’s what I was talking about.”

A Kerry spokeswoman, Amy Brundage, said Kerry’s prepared text had called for him to say: “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. Just ask President Bush.”

Kerry’s remarks came during a campaign rally for California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides. Kerry opened his speech at Pasadena City College with several one-liners, saying at one point that Bush had lived in Texas but now “lives in a state of denial.”

He then said: “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.”
© 2006 MSNBC Interactive

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13018908/