What? That’s the kind of sense these people make when they try to debate you. It’s just about impossible to come up with a counterargument because their basis for arguing is…laughable.

Couldn’t Kerry have spoken with reporters after he got back from ’supporting the troops’? And where are the photographs of Kerry with the troops? (And I don’t mean with members of the IVAW or the VVAW).

Apparently after this TPM Mudraker accused milbloggers and others of faking the photo, he comes up with a weird explanation for it:

…it turns out that Kerry was at that table to conduct an off-the-record breakfast discussion with two reporters, so there would have been no reason whatsover for troops to be sitting with them. In fact, Kerry and the reporters even sought out empty seats, I’m told.

Yeah. So? Kerry SEEKS OUT EMPTY SEATS in order to talk privately with reporters. What does THAT tell you? All I have to say is WHY? Why would he do that? Would he possibly be saying something he wouldn’t want them to hear? Why isn’t he using this as a photo opportunity to stand proudly with guys who are serving, and if photos like that exist, then let’s see them. I gather from a lot of guys talking about his visit that he got the cold shoulder and nobody wanted to be seen with him, and nobody wanted to sit with him. So that photo makes the point that Kerry prefers journalists over soldiers, I still don’t see that it didn’t make the point that everyone was making, regardless as to whether or not it was a prime example of schadenfreude on our part.

We have leftists who at one point were selling t-shirts and other nifty items with a picture of George Bush with a bullethole in his head, but we can’t snigger about Kerry sitting alone in a mess hall?

Ed Morrissey

Bryan Preston replied later at Hot Air, which had posted the photo, with a few notes about TPM Muckraker’s credibility:

It was, of course, our friends on the left who insisted that the photo itself was bogus by challenging facts of Kerry’s travel schedule, the data embedded in the photo, the decorations on the walls around him, etc, forcing our other friends at Powerline and elsewhere to prove that, yes indeed, that is a chow hall in Iraq, and yes indeed, Kerry was there at the specified time in question, yes indeed, most people don’t set the dates on their digital cameras, yes indeed, the decorations are there as in the photo, and yes indeed, there is a Portuguese flag hanging there even though Portugal has no troops in Iraq anymore. Our friends on the left toss up silly conspiracy theories with multiple moving parts, our friends on the right spend hours and hours shooting said conspiracy theories down. That’s just how it works most of the time. Good for Mr. Sargent at TPM for taking a route that’s a little friendlier to facts and leaves no room for conspiracies in what should be the final accounting of this photo.

While Bryan makes some good points in this rebuttal, it’s hard to escape the fact that none of the above would have been necessary if we all hadn’t taken some distinct (and not terribly self-elevating) schadenfreude in Kerry’s supposed discomfiture on his junket to the front. It’s an unfortunate human failing to take pleasure in the embarrassment of those we do not like, and sometimes the temptation to do so leads all of us across the political spectrum to do it. In this case, I did it, and I should have resisted the impulse. I apologize for getting this one wrong.

I see no reason to apologize, they do it to us all the time. It is regrettable that we would find it as funny as we do, but what the hell? It’s when Kerry opens his mouth and inserts foot on so many occasions that makes it an amazing feat of stupidity that this clown would run for president, and he hasn’t stopped doing it, either!

Dan Riehl has about the most priceless response that I’ve read to this so far:

The Distinguished Gentleman from Massachusetts traveled halfway around the world on tax dollars, allegedly to support the troops he ticked off with a poorly crafted joke - and rather than spend just a little bit more time with them, he opted to have breakfast with reporters from the New York Times and The New York Review, instead.

Michelle Malkin has a roundup, if you want to see more, go there.