From the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Thursday, January 6, 2005

Baghdad -- Sen. John Kerry, whose seemingly shifting positions on the U.S. war in Iraq plagued him throughout his presidential campaign, came to this war- torn capital Wednesday to see for himself whether the country was moving toward stability or deeper into chaos.

Kerry, who repeatedly charged during the presidential campaign that President Bush had botched the war effort, was greeted warmly by U.S. soldiers in Baghdad.

"I've been visiting a lot places like Des Moines and Green Bay, and it has been great," the Massachusetts Democrat said during an informal lunch meeting with a small group of reporters and representatives of nongovernmental organizations. "But we are at war, and I think you can't really make all the judgments that you need to make without digging in."

He declined to compare the growing insurgency with the one he faced in South Vietnam as a Navy gunship lieutenant more than three decades ago. But he insisted that superior firepower alone wouldn't quell the uprising disrupting Iraq.

"No insurgency is defeated by conventional military power alone," he said. "Look at the IRA," the Irish Republican Army, which fought a decadeslong guerrilla war against the British in Northern Ireland before a Catholic- Protestant power-sharing government was put in place. "It was defeated by a combination of time and political negotiation."

Kerry, who talked with U.S. intelligence officials and Iraqi officials on Wednesday, was also scheduled to meet with officials of the U.S. Embassy and with members of the interim Iraqi government, including interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and a deputy to Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the Shiite leader at the top of an electoral list favored in Iraq's Jan. 30 elections.

U.S. soldiers approached Kerry inside the restaurant of the Rashid Hotel, asking him to pose for photographs and sign T-shirts. The star-struck restaurant manager insisted on serving Kerry the restaurant's specialty, a plate of grilled chicken and lamb.

Later in the day, Kerry met with about 20 soldiers based in his home state, including reservists from the 356th Engineer Detachment and 126th Aviation Company of the Massachusetts Army National Guard at Camp Victory, where soldiers are bivouacked in luxury villas once inhabited by Saddam Hussein and his loyalists.

"They all joked about how living conditions had changed since Sen. Kerry was in Vietnam," said David Wade, the senator's communications director.

Kerry was scheduled to fly on a C-130 military transport plane today to visit troops in Fallujah and Mosul.

The senator said he was more interested in asking questions of soldiers, U.S. officials, Iraqis and even the journalists themselves instead of rehashing the political battles of the past campaign season.

But in several instances, Kerry attacked what he called the "horrendous judgments" and "unbelievable blunders" of the Bush administration. The mistakes, he said, included former U.S. occupation leader Paul Bremer's decisions to disband the Iraqi army and purge the government of former members of Hussein's Baath Party. Both moves are widely believed to have fueled the largely Sunni insurgency.

"What is sad about what's happening here now is that so much of it is a process of catching up from the enormous miscalculations and wrong judgments made in the beginning," he said. "And the job has been made enormously harder."

He added, however, that it was time to move forward.

"Mistakes have been made," he said. "Now, it's a different time and different set of judgments that have to be made. I'm here to make judgments about what moves are available to us."

Kerry is visiting Iraq as part of a Middle East tour that also includes meetings with leaders in Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian territories. He said success in Iraq was vital as part of the struggle for wider change in the Middle East.

"The stakes are very important, very high, and not just for Iraq," he said. "You have another election in the West Bank, a set of challenges to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the region that are quite daunting."


It looks likes a good fact finding mission for him..

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"Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet."

Ha!! Looks to me like he was over there bad-mouthing the Commander-In-Chief. Typical of Kerry.

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"What exactly is this foreign policy experience?" Obama said mockingly of the New York senator. "Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no."

....Right on cue....

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"Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet."

Yes, HE was.

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"What exactly is this foreign policy experience?" Obama said mockingly of the New York senator. "Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no."

You are, without any doubt, Bush's number one fan.

When Bush goes to Bagdad for a photo op, he is a great man who cares about the troops. When Kerry goes to Bagdad for a photo op, he is just there to bad mouth the commander-in-chief. I think that people who are blindly partisan hurt this country. I think if people would stop blindly supporting their "team" and instead start looking at all political moves with a critical eye, politicians would get away with a lot less crap.

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"George W. Bush surrounds himself with smart people the way a hole surrounds itself with a donut." —Dennis Miller

Well, obviously PJ you didn't read Kerry's comments:

....."attacked what he called the "horrendous judgments" and "unbelievable blunders" of the Bush administration."

Do you believe a Senator should do that in war time? Go over to the war site and makes such comments to the troops about their Commander-In-Chief?

We live in a free country and he can certainly voice that opinion from home. But to go into the war zone and say it is quite another thing. I'm sure the Middle East press is going to have a ball with it. And those comments for sure give the terrorists and insurgents hope.

YOU may believe it's the right thing to do. I don't.

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"What exactly is this foreign policy experience?" Obama said mockingly of the New York senator. "Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no."

Absolutely. When did we make a rule that the President was above criticism? I would, though, have liked to hear him specifically state what he is referring to and what should be done. I can think of a bunch of mistakes that fit his description. But I don't know if he is referring to the illegal mistakes, the immoral mistakes, the tactical mistakes, or the stupid mistakes. I would have liked him to be more specific.

No it isn't.

Are you assuming that the terrorists and insurgents don't realize that we have made the type of mistakes the senator mentions? They know about our mistakes and they have already capitalized on them.

I do. The Bush administration is one of the more cloistered administrations that I can remember and NO ONE within that administration will admit to mistakes. They relegate protestors to "zones" and they brag that they don't read newspapers.

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"George W. Bush surrounds himself with smart people the way a hole surrounds itself with a donut." —Dennis Miller

This really isn't true. Rumsfeld admitted to having acted without the correct intelligence and that it was a mistake to have trusted the evidence they had worked with. I am sure you are aware of that so you should be fair.

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lambaste me not

What? You need your 'unquestioning patriotrism' chip activated.

But seriously, I think it is a little crude to go to Iraq (via invitation I presume) and then criticize Bush, he should've at least waited till he got back.

Protest zones existed before this administration. Guess you weren't paying attention then.

And MOST of our newspapers are full of distortions anyway. Why would the president want to get his info from then....when he's got access to the real stuff???? I'm sure he scans some of them....I heard he reads parts of the Dallas Morning News...which is my newspaper.

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"What exactly is this foreign policy experience?" Obama said mockingly of the New York senator. "Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no."