Kerry Visits Iraq for 'Firsthand' View; Car Bombs Kill 15

[SCRUBDASHRUB]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49279-2005Jan5.html

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BAGHDAD, Jan. 5 -- Sen. John F. Kerry arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday for a two-day assessment of the war, the central issue in his unsuccessful presidential campaign.

Kerry (D-Mass.) met privately with U.S. diplomats, intelligence officials and military commanders, senior members of the interim government and Sunni and Shiite Muslim political figures. He scheduled no public events or news conferences and said during a lunch with a small group of reporters in the fortified Green Zone that he had come to Iraq to ask questions, not answer them.

"I've been visiting a lot of places like Des Moines and Green Bay, and it has been great. But we are at war, and I think you can't really make all the judgments that you need to make without digging in," he said. "The Coalition Provisional Authority made some horrendous judgments and complicated our presence here tremendously.

"Now it's a different time and different set of judgments that need to be made. I need to understand it, so I can make the judgments. That's why I'm here, to see and hear firsthand what the dynamics are."

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