They're rolling out the loose cannon!

Lurch is mumbling over in the corner somewhere, so they're trotting out Teresa. Mrs. Kerry in Patriotic War.

The Bush campaign yesterday fired back at John Kerry wife's Teresa for questioning President Bush's and Vice President Dick Cheney's patriotism.

The candidate's outspoken wife had called both men "unpatriotic" because their campaign has questioned whether Kerry was truthful when he claimed he never tossed away his Navy medals at a Vietnam War protest.

So Terry, what's today's spin on whether he threw 'em away or not?

The president and vice president also have criticized Kerry's national-security record.

But yesterday, Kerry's wife said they'd gone too far.

"To have a couple of people, who escaped [Vietnam service] four, five, six times and deferred and deferred and deferred calling him anything . . . is in and of itself unpatriotic. Unpatriotic," Teresa Heinz Kerry said in an interview with Telemundo, NBC's Spanish-language network.

Woohoo, there's crisp analysis! It's unpatriotic to criticize Lurch unless you served in Vietnam. Hmm, maybe patriotism is different over in Mozambique. I guess she thinks Lurch's drive-by tour of duty gives him bulletproof undies. Let's turn to to a "valid critic" then, Lurch's former commander, retired Admiral Roy Hoffman - Retired admiral says Kerry had 'absolutely no respect' for military

Mention the name John Kerry to Roy Hoffmann and the fuming begins.

Kerry was an opportunist, an exaggerator, even a liar, said Hoffmann, a crusty retired U.S. Navy rear admiral who oversaw Kerry's Navy swift boat unit in the late '60s when Kerry did his service in Vietnam.

"He had absolutely no respect for the military," Hoffmann, 78, said in an interview Thursday. "His idea was to get some medals and gild his future ambitions."

That's Terry's boy!