There is a surprisingly good article on John Kerry considering the source. The Chicago Tribune has an article on John Kerry, tying in his opposition to the Iraq war to his previous fight against the Vietnam War:
He was a seminal figure as the Vietnam War spiraled downward, just as the generals and the politicians were starting to acknowledge that the war was a failure.
Young, lanky and highly decorated from his service commanding a Navy swift boat, John Kerry sat before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and famously said, “How do you ask a man to be the last person to die for a mistake?”
Few living American politicians have had their lives so defined by war as Kerry. His wartime service and wartime protest stoked his political career in Massachusetts. His military background burnished his credentials among Democrats seeking a nominee to run against an incumbent president during wartime in 2004. And now, in a quieter time, his hair gray and reading glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, he finds himself again opposing his government’s conflict.
John Kerry is back in the Senate, this time as a Senator, but with the same question:
On the Senate floor recently, Kerry recalled his famous question before the Foreign Relations Committee in 1971.
“I never thought I would be reliving that question again. I never thought I would have parents of young Americans killed in Iraq look me in the eye and tell me: Senator, my son died in vain,” said Kerry, quickly adding that no death is in vain when it is in service of the country.
While a briefer explanation than I would provide, the article even provides an accurate account of Kerry’s vote on the war, which has been distorted by many sources:
To be sure, Kerry voted to authorize the war in Iraq. But he said at the time that he was doing so purely to give Bush the clout he needed to pressure Saddam Hussein’s government. Nonetheless, as he repeatedly criticized the war while running for president, Republicans portrayed him as a flip-flopper of the worst kind.
Update: Kerry A Year Ahead of Fellow Democrats on Iraq Withdrawal Proposal