Imagine for just a moment a candidate running against Roosevelt sending a group of his cronies to Tarawa or North Africa to assess the military situation. It's pretty hard to imagine, isn't it? This is exactly what Kerry intends to do:

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."

Whatever approach he embraces will have a better chance of success, Kerry argues, because he knows how to play well with others, TIME's Nancy Gibbs reports. The interview with Kerry is part of TIME's Special Report on Iraq One Year Later (on newsstands Monday, March 8).

When asked by TIME about President Bush's hate of the word 'nuance' and his opinion of the word, Kerry says, "Some of these issues are very complicated and deserve more than a simplistic this or that," says Kerry. As he speaks, Kerry heats up, grows loud, almost angry. His message shifts: Don't for a moment think all that worldliness means he has no convictions. Or that he is weak or a waffler or a political opportunist, TIME reports.

I think Biden is a straight shooter (except for that littel plagiarism deal), however, this is going to backfire on Kerry. Especially if we capture or kill bin-Laden during that news cycle:

NEW YORK, March 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Using powerful software called
Analyst's Notebook that helps to piece together data on criminal and terror
networks, U.S. military and intelligence officials are increasingly confident
they are narrowing Osama bin Laden's whereabouts, Newsweek reports in the
March 15 issue (on newsstands Monday, March 8). Key to the search is
"accumulated humint," or human intelligence, says one insider. Other
officials tell Newsweek that an increasing number of "data points" -- reports
of sightings -- have created an ever-clearer picture of bin Laden's area of
operation as he appears to shuttle between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Now
they've focused that picture to the point where they have been able to send in
Predator unmanned aerial vehicles to search for him.