tom_thinks

Well, I couldn't agree more with this NY Times editorial:

But for the most part Mr. Kerry, who voted against the first Persian Gulf war, tailored his positions on this one to his presidential ambitions. He was more hawkish when the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination seemed to be Richard Gephardt, and more dovish when Howard Dean picked up momentum. At the height of the Dean insurgency, both Mr. Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, decided to oppose spending $87 billion to underwrite the occupation of Iraq that they both voted to authorize.

The Republicans have made much of this record; the Kerry campaign is haunted by replays of the theme song from the old TV show "Flipper." Mr. Bush, however, has a far more dangerous pattern of behavior. On issues from tax cuts to foreign policy, the president tends to stick stubbornly to his original course even when changing events cry out for adaptation. His explanations seem to evolve every day, but his thinking never does.

What we would like to hear from Mr. Kerry is how the events of the last year have changed his own thinking. He consistently describes the failures of Iraq as failures in tactics - from a lack of international support to a lack of adequate body armor for the troops. We're wondering if he really believes better planning or better diplomacy would have made the difference, or whether the whole idea of sending troops was flawed. Arab nations have a painful history of Western colonization, and there is an instinctive resistance to the idea of a Western occupation of Arab soil. How much does Mr. Kerry think the addition of French and German soldiers would have improved things? In retrospect, it seems that even if Arab nations like Saudi Arabia or Egypt had added their support, the outcome would have more likely been trouble for the governments of those countries back home rather than credibility on the streets of Baghdad.

There are undoubtedly circumstances that call for military action, but we would like to know whether, as president, John Kerry would insist on a higher threshold than he settled for as an opportunistic senator in 2002.

After reading that, take a look at Talking Points Memo, where Josh Marshall says this and more about Kerry's war position:

In any case, all of this is merely a too-lengthy way of noting that giving the president the authority and the muscle to force the inspectors back into Iraq (i.e., giving him the authority to go to war if they were not allowed back in) simply cannot be equated with giving the president the go-ahead to game the process and go to war immediately even if they were allowed in.

That doesn't mean that Kerry is in the clear on any legitimate criticism. But ironically the best argument against Kerry's position is one that is simply off-limits to the president -- namely, that Kerry should have or perhaps did know that the president was lying when he said he needed the muscle of the resolution to force the inspectors back in and have some hope of settling the crisis short of war.