What are they thinking?

From the Washington Post

Stephanie Cutter, Kerry's communications director, said Kerry "voted to hold [former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein] accountable and continues to believe that it was the right thing to do. After witnessing the way in which the president went to war, Senator Kerry voted against the $87 billion because it was wrong to give a blank check to the president for a failed policy."
Bush is stepping up pressure on Kerry to declare whether it was right to oust Hussein, despite the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Steve Schmidt, a Bush campaign spokesman, said the president would not only have still ousted Hussein, but not adjusted the strategy or timing of the military strike. "Unequivocal answer: [Bush] would have removed Saddam when we did," Schmidt wrote via e-mail.
Knowing then what he knows today about the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Kerry still would have voted to authorize the war and "in all probability" would have launched a military attack to oust Hussein by now if he were president, Kerry national security adviser Jamie Rubin said in an interview Saturday. As recently as Friday, the Massachusetts senator had said he only "might" have still gone to war.

Either Rubin is making claims out of his ass, or Kerry actually believes that going after Saddam would've accomplished something. Either way, this campaign needs to get their answers straight. Like you guys have mentioned in comments, Kerry can really only be attacked for character issues, and the flip flop debate is huge to the repubs. The answer to the war in Iraq is that it was a bad idea. The answer to why he voted for it is that it was a good faith support of the president. Any other answer is going to lose swing voters and dems immediately. I think it's time the big guns came out against Bush and I mean seriously, can John Kerry just stand up to the fire?