So Kerry wasn't very clear about his phrasing and the white house crew were either too dumb to get the joke or have intentionally avoided the truth.
But that's not very surprising as it is the usual Bush procedure to ignore reality

      Both could easily be possible because as Kerry said they didn't learn from the past when the Viet Nam underground kept the conflict going for years even though they were poorly equipped, which anyone who had learned about that war would have known, though if you remember bush never left the states during that time, while Kerry had first hand observations of the problems, and as we now know the Bush administration was ignoring the information that didn't fit it's plans to invade a sovereign country that was repeatedly acquiescing to Bush's changing demands which quickly became impossible to comply with as Bush neared his pre-determined invasion date while ignoring pleas from the UN for time to finish their investigations, and of course show that there were no WMDs as Bush was pushing to promote the fear needed to invade Iraq.

      So it's not surprising that the White House doesn't get that the punch line to Kerry's joke is Bush and his self imposed ignorance to the real world.

      It is also sad that there are others that have fallen on the bandwagon of ignorance and have helped continue the miss-representation that the Bush league has promoted.