Be ready for trouble - read this article by the herald about Kerry

"There is some schedule showing what you (need) to do to get Iraqis standing up and defending themselves which is now suddenly beginning to happen, so there are some signs of progress," Kerry said during a 30-minute speech at the Park Plaza Hotel. "The only way we're going to be successful there – and ultimately, success is going to have to be somewhat redefined – is to create sufficient stability to get the troops home."

He later added while speaking to reporters: "The Iraqi forces are improving somewhat. Whether it's enough to hold the line is obviously a very serious question."

While acknowledging gains, Kerry called the war "deeply troubled" and said he is working on a timetable for a troop pullout.

"I want us to be successful. We all in America want it. Our troops are doing an incredible job. They deserve better choices in support of them," he said.

Kerry's comments were criticized as political posturing by Bill Dobbs of the anti-war group United for Justice and Peace.

"There's a real surge in opposition to the war but on the other hand as we get into the (2008 presidential) election, the Democrats will be trying to get off scot-free and pretend they're opposing the war when they're letting it go on, costing lives," Dobbs said.

The only substantive way that party leaders challenge the White House is to demand that the administration publish a set of metrics for success that would be subject to public scrutiny. This, again, is smart politics, assuming the mission in Iraq is going south, as it would reveal the administration’s failures; similarly, refusal to publish such criteria would undercut the official line that all is well. As policy, however, it’s hard to see how this could make a difference: While metrics could help make this clearer to the public, they can’t change the facts on the ground.

In an August 24 op-ed, Gary Hart challenged directly, accusing Democrats of lacking the “courage” to call for withdrawal. And he’s right: Opposition to withdrawal seems overwhelmingly political. Wesley Clark, who as a war opponent is seen by many hawks as an effective spokesman against a timetable, has warned in the pages of The Washington Post and in public speeches that we must “change the course” in Iraq “before it’s too late.” I asked Clark when we might know that the window of opportunity had closed, and he dodged, saying only, “We’re still far from that point.” Biden, when asked for a response to Hart on the August 28 edition of This Week, declined to do so in any meaningful way, offering instead the bizarre reply that “for me to defend myself against Gary Hart is kind of ludicrous to begin with. I kind of resent it, to tell the truth.”

But despite the careful efforts at political positioning and the blows President Bush has taken on the Iraq issue, Democrats of all stripes face a painful political problem of their own. Most polls have support for withdrawal in the near future in the low 40s. That’s not nearly enough for an anti-war campaign to win. At the same time, those numbers suggest that an overwhelming majority of actual Democratic voters want to end the war soon. It’s hard to imagine Democratic politicians credibly positioning themselves as the leaders of a party of better war management as long as it’s clear that, in office, they’d be beholden to a deeply anti-war base. Moreover, there’s reason to think that even if a majority of Americans do come to favor abandoning the war effort, advocating withdrawal would be a poor political strategy. Defeatism, as the 1972 election showed, is not a very appealing political product, even in the context of a deeply unpopular war.

More convincing anti-war arguments, centered on the case that withdrawal could be a positive contribution to Iraq’s stability, might do the trick, but bucking majority opinion is something politicians are always loath to do. Thus, it’s no surprise that many Democrats seem to feel that caution is the better part of valor on this issue, and that the best thing to do is to say as little as possible. Iraq, after all, is a mess of the president’s creation, not theirs, and no honest policy proposal can be as appealing as the fantasy universe of Bush’s speeches. Poking the occasional hole in that bubble and then lying low while hoping the administration implodes seems to make sense, though that strategy risks repeating the debacle of 2002, when the politics of evasion went down to massive defeat. Under the circumstances, though, it might be best to simply abandon the quest for party unity and to watch the midterms closely. The fortunes of the hawks and doves in those elections should help guide the Democrat platform as they head into 2008.