Caution: All-political

You are probably already familiar with the standard Kerry-Iraq flip-flop. Back in 2002, Kerry was unwilling to be stranded on the unpopular side of yet another successful war effort (like he was in 1991 for the Gulf War). Back then, he wrote in the New York Times:

If Saddam Hussein is unwilling to bend to the international community's already existing order, then he will have invited enforcement, even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act.

But by 2004, while trying to run leftwards of his Democratic primary opponents, Kerry agreed with Chris Matthews' question on Hardball that he was unhappy with the conduct of the war, and was an anti-war candidate:

I am -- Yes, in the sense that I don't believe the president took us to war as he should have, yes, absolutely.

His vote against funding the Iraq and Afghanistan occupation and reconstruction in October 2003 matches the sudden leftward cut.

Let's see if I can paraphrase a Kerry defense: "Oh, but you see, Kerry was and is still behind the decision to go to war, only Kerry would have done things altogether differently. You know, so that France, Germany and Russia would have tens of thousands of soldiers there, no looting would have occurred, no insurgency, and so forth. So he wasn't against the war, only against how it turned out."

Well, nevermind that the guy in the Oval Office doesn't have a magical Futurescope to help with decisionmaking, and nevermind that these staunch allies of Kerry's America have pre-emptively nixed any hint of lending soldiers, now or ever. Can we at least say that Kerry wasn't flipping or flopping, and instead was just slathering an added layer of nuance to an increasingly complicated position? Well, Kerry's debate answers Friday night in St. Louis sure make it hard to put the flip-flop tag out of mind:

Well, let me tell you straight up: I've never changed my mind about Iraq. I do believe Saddam Hussein was a threat. I always believed he was a threat.

Mere minutes later, regarding Iran:

I don't think you can just rely on U.N. sanctions, Randee. But you're absolutely correct, it is a threat, it's a huge threat. And what's interesting is, it's a threat that has grown while the president has been preoccupied with Iraq, where there wasn't a threat.

Got that? There was no threat in Iraq. But Saddam Hussein was a threat.

Kerry needs to be careful, because flip-flopping that violently in the space of a few minutes could re-injure that rotator cuff. And did you notice that Kerry is saying directly that Iran is a huge and growing threat? Is Kerry on the verge of warning us that Iran has WMD stockpiles, even though the gathered intelligence might not be perfect? Could Kerry be laying the groundwork for another year-and-a-half "rush to war?" You'd think MoveOn.org would be alarmed.