Quote Originally Posted by Tribesman

What part did you miss.......
what he said was the US army is full of idiots.
.....so which part of the speech contained those words to paraphrase ?
"If you work hard in school, be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you wind up stuck in Iraq".

One possible interpretation of that, clearly, is that Kerry was speaking to the students. In this interpretation, Kerry is implying that those in the military didn't work hard in school or weren't smart. It is this interpretation that Big Tex was summarizing with "he said the US army is full of idiots".

I agree that the joke called for a dig at Bush, and him not being very bright and dragging us into Iraq, but that's hardly the only reasonable conclusion. Which meaning you seized upon will color how you paraphrase the joke.