I think that detailed policy statements wouldn't make sense for him from a strategic point of view.  He has nothing to gain  (in terms of uncommitted votes) and everything to lose.  People who are strongly committed to left of center policies in Iraq have a chance to be heard in a Democratic administration.  They have no chance in a GOP Administration.   Kerry would be smart to say very little (unless it helps him with undecided voters).

Americans vote their pocketbooks.  As someone once said, "It's the economy, stupid!".  Not a very elegant statement, but true nonetheless.

This election will be a referendum on Bush's handling of the economy.  Kerry will win if enough people are unhappy about the economy.

It's just that economic issues are a lot less "sexy" (as in fun and exciting) to talk about, and so the people on this board find them boring.

Kerry can criticize the mess Bush has made in Iraq, but the fact is, this mess is such that we could not abandon the Iraq mission at this time.  All we can do is have someone new who didn't create the mess, take charge of the cleanup.  The irony is that the cleanup is probably a set of things that would be similar if Bush or Kerry were doing it.  One difference, however, is by bringing in someone new, who was not responsible for MAKING the mess, the same solutions that would have ZERO credibility if Bush were proposing them, among our allies and the Iraqi citizenry, could have more credibility if someone known to oppose Bush were to implement them.

Sort of like why Nixon could open relations with Communist China, but nobody who was ever perceived as being "soft on Communism" could have gotten away with going to China at the time.

OK, that's a motherhood.

Among the far Lefties here, probably not.  They're not interested in facts anyway, so nothing's going to alter their hatred of Bush.

And since only about 1-5% of the American population cares about foreign policy (and even fewer can engage in intelligent discourse on it) I doubt it.

But it's his one chance to be taken seriously on that issue.