Well, it's pretty hard to square with his vote in favor of the war, for starters. He now claims that his vote was in favor of threatening or pretending we were ready to go to war. Tell me, if Bush were saying something as screwy as that, would you believe him?

It's easy to say vague stuff like "I would have listened to the international community, and made this an international effort, rather than a unilateral one" (that's not a direct quote, but is a substantively accurate paraphrase of past comments by Kerry and others). The problem is, the international community in general, and the UN in particular, was not really prepared to do much to deal with this situation; most of the rest of the world has come to rely on the American military to do the heavy lifting in these types of situations. And some of our principal adversaries in the court of world opinion were somewhat less than candid about the real reasons for their opposition to the US. No, they let us handle this one, while they kept their hands clean; how nice for them.

As for the "primary season vs. general election" thing, keep in mind that the usual approach is for Democrats to run to the left during the primaries, and run to the center in the general election. It's counterintuitive to expect Kerry (or whoever the nominee is) to suddenly start speaking clearly on his opposition to the war after the Democratic convention; I predict a good deal more hedging of bets, not less. I guess we'll see who's right?