The new warhawk.(candidate John F. Kerry's views on Iraq War)

NEW YORK, AUGUST 10

SIX months ago I ventured in this space that the Democratic position on the war in Iraq was the single most critical question in U.S. politics. The statement made on Monday by Senator Kerry is the climactic event in this matter. Senator Kerry said that notwithstanding all that is known now, whatever have been the developments in the past year, if he had it to do again, he'd vote as he did: in favor of giving the president the power he requested, before going on to wage war in Iraq.

Kerry made this faintly more tolerable to the anti-war segment by saying that he was pleading, after all, a point of constitutional rectitude: the president should have the power inherent in his role as commander-in-chief. Kerry did not trouble to ponder what it is the Constitution was talking about when it said that only Congress could declare war. Never mind; we don't declare wars any more, we just fight.

But outstanding in political meaning was less what Kerry said about standing by his vote than what he said about the long-term commitment we have undertaken. Surely he would pledge to reduce our troops in Iraq by next summer, even if he wasn't prepared to simply call them home, as Democratic contender Howard Dean had demanded.

Well, here is how Senator Kerry put it: "I believe if you do the kind of alliance-building that is available to us, that it is appropriate to have a goal of reducing our troops over that period of time. Obviously we have to see how events unfold."

Indeed. What events?

Here is where John Kerry underwrote the Iraq venture in terms extraordinarily comprehensive. "The measurement has to be, as I've said all along, the stability of Iraq, the ability to have the elections, and the training and transformation of the Iraqi security force itself." Get from your paper supplier the thinnest sheet in the inventory, ...