MARCH 7, 2004 Sunday : (TIME REPORTS : JOHN KERRY SAYS HE WILL 'ALMOST CERTAINLY' SEND HIS OWN TEAM TO IRAQ TO ASSESS SITUATION 'WITHIN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS OR MONTHS') New York – Senator John Kerry tells TIME that he "almost certainly" will send a team to Iraq "within the next few weeks or months" to help him formulate his Iraq policy positions. "I may ask some Democratic colleagues and experts to go to Iraq and make this assessment so I have a strong basis on which to proceed," he tells TIME's Perry Bacon, Lisa Beyer and Karen Tumulty on his campaign plane from Washington, DC to Florida last week. He mentions Senate colleague Joseph Biden, chief campaign foreign policy adviser Rand Beers and longtime Kerry Senate aide Nancy Stetson. But, says White House communications director Dan Bartlett, Kerry's "mission to finally understand what is happening in Iraq reveals once again that (his) attacks are based on politics, not facts." ...Among the first things Kerry would do as President, says Sandy Berger, who was a National Security Adviser under Bill Clinton and has consulted with Kerry on the subject, would be to tell the American people to "put aside your misgivings or whatever you thought about this in the beginning. We cannot fail now." - TIME, March 7, 2004 via 30 posted on 07/19/2004 5:20:40 PM PDT by kcvl
After further review, the junior Senator from Massachusetts determined that he already had representatives in Iraq.