The NY Times has this to say:

Talking Sense, at Last, on Iraq
    The New York Times | Editorial

      Tuesday 21 September 2004

      After weeks of politically damaging delay, John Kerry finally seems to
have found his voice on what ought to be the central issue of this year's
election: the mismanaged war in Iraq and how to bring it to an acceptable
conclusion. It was none too soon. While the fate of the Iraqi people, the
success of the war on terrorism and America's international standing have
all been teetering ominously in the balance, Mr. Kerry has allowed the
presidential campaign to veer off into squabbles about events long past -
like the candidates' 30-year-old war records - and about Mr. Kerry's
confusing and sometimes contradictory recent statements on foreign policy.

      Speaking in New York yesterday, Mr. Kerry laid out a well-grounded,
intellectually straightforward and powerful critique of the Bush
administration's past mistakes in Iraq. He gave a coherent explanation for
his vote two years ago to authorize President Bush to use military force,
making a clear distinction between how the White House should have used that
authority to maximize international pressure against Saddam Hussein and the
self-isolating course it actually followed. And, for the first time since
becoming a presidential nominee, he explicitly said that he would never have
supported the invasion of an Iraq that did not possess weapons of mass
destruction.

      Even more important, he linked his criticisms to a set of alternative
policies, which, while not entirely new to those who have closely followed
his campaign statements, offer the best chance for retrieving a situation
that daily grows more dangerous for Iraqis, Americans and a volatile region.
As Mr. Kerry correctly noted, "We have traded a dictator for a chaos that
has left America less secure."

      This should signal the start of the kind of serious and useful debate
the American people deserve. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush still declines to even
acknowledge the disastrous condition the war has fallen into, preferring
simply to assert over and over that the course there is now firmly set for a
democratic and stable future. Democrats who question these Pollyannaish
projections are almost instantly slapped down as unpatriotic under miners of
military morale.

      That was the president's reflexive response to Mr. Kerry yesterday,
coupled with the preposterous claim that Mr. Kerry's plan for a much more
broadly internationalized effort is no different from the administration's
own American-fought, American-paid-for and American-directed approach. It is
encouraging to see that Republican foreign policy heavyweights like Senators
Chuck Hagel, Richard Lugar and John McCain are now also asking tough
questions about the way the war is going. It is surely no service to
America's brave fighting men and women, who know firsthand what they are
facing, for Mr. Bush to pretend otherwise and to refuse to consider policy
changes that might help them prevail and come home.

      Turning things around at this late date will not be easy, but the
president could make a beginning today, when he addresses an audience of
world leaders at the United Nations. Mr. Kerry set the stage when he urged
Mr. Bush to convene a summit meeting of those leaders to build a truly
international effort to protect the elections, train Iraqi security forces
and create a broader-based, more effective reconstruction effort.

      Perhaps the presidential campaign is finally under way.
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