Boston Globe reporter, Bryan Bender, has written an article that echoes many points already made on this blog and by bloggers elsewhere.

In the heat of the 2004 presidential campaign, Democratic nominee John Kerry declared that President Bush “should convene a summit of the world’s powers and Iraq’s neighbors” to help stabilize the country.

“Second,” Kerry urged on Sept. 20, 2004, “the president must get serious about training Iraqi security forces.”

Shortly thereafter, the president derided Kerry’s call for a regional summit, saying, “I’ve been to a lot of summits. My friends, a summit is not a plan.”

And at a press conference with then-Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi , Bush maintained that “we continue to accelerate the training of Iraqi security forces,” claiming that the Iraqi army was already “half complete.”

But this week, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group determined that Bush must immediately hold a regional summit and sharply increase training to salvage the US mission in Iraq. And in receiving the report, Bush called the ideas “very interesting,” vowing to “act in a timely fashion.”

Now, Kerry, who is considering a second run for the presidency, views the study group’s findings - others of which also mirror his own prescriptions from two years ago - as evidence that he was on the right track in 2004.

“That’s what I was pressing in ‘04, and that is what I am pressing today,” Kerry said in an interview yesterday. The Bush administration ” has wasted two years with slogans while there were real policies on the table that they could have pursued in a bipartisan manner.”

He said that when he first read the Iraq Study Group report, “My initial reaction was, ‘At last the Republicans are put in a place where they can’t play politics with this.’ “

But Kerry, in an interview in his Capitol Hill office, said he believes the majority of the country was not ready to see how urgently a new direction was needed in Iraq, partly because key information was not widely known.

He cited the recently published National Intelligence Estimate that concluded the Iraq war - far from being the central front in defeating Al Qaeda, as Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney said in 2004 - has been a recruiting bonanza for terrorist groups.

The administration’s claims seemed more believable to the public in 2004, Kerry said. “The whole dynamic has changed.”

Some independent political observers agreed with Kerry that Americans weren’t in a frame of mind to question the president’s policies in ‘04.

[...]

Still, [Jeremy] Pressman, [a political science professor at the University of Connecticut] said, Bush had an inherent advantage in 2004 in being able to portray the Iraq war in patriotic colors.

“There is something inherently easier to portraying the pro war, jingoistic picture,” said Pressman. Kerry, he said, had to argue that he was “against the war but not pro-Saddam Hussein. He had to argue that the war is wrong and is being fought incorrectly, but not be against the troops.”

But even Pressman noted that parts of the blueprint Kerry laid out in his bid for the White House have now become standard talking points about the war.

For example, a common refrain of Kerry’s speeches and position papers was that the Iraq war had diverted critical resources from defeating the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

In an appearance on “The David Letterman Show” in September 2004, Kerry called the president’s decision not to focus on the war in Afghanistan “catastrophic .” In the second presidential debate a few weeks later, Kerry said Bush “took his eye off the ball, off Osama bin Laden.”

This week, the Iraq Study Group said: “It is critical for the United States to provide additional political, economic, and military support for Afghanistan, including resources that might become available as combat forces are moved out of Iraq.”

And like the study group report this week, Kerry in 2004 said that pushing aggressively for a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians was critical to winning the backing of Arab states.

Kerry had also warned about rising sectarian warfare in Iraq, saying in April 2004 that the country would face “civil war” if security was not enhanced immediately. Many military specialists now believe sectarian violence has risen to the level of a civil war.

But Kerry, who has said he will announce his presidential intentions in the spring, insisted yesterday that his prime focus is reaching a bipartisan agreement to implement the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. He met last week with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and incoming Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates to press the case.

Before it’s too late, he said, “It is very important we work on this to leverage American security interests, protect our troops, and sustain our long-term interests.”