A Globe article crediting Kerry with calling for withdrawal.

[ProSense]

SCOT LEHIGH
John Kerry's encore
By Scot Lehigh, Globe Columnist | May 23, 2006

JOHN KERRY may just be charting his path back to the future.

The man who cast a vote he now acknowledges was a mistake on the Iraq war resolution, and then spent two years awkwardly confronting the fallout as he ran for president, has finally come to a position where he seems comfortable.

Kerry's call for a near-withdrawal of US troops from Iraq by year's end has made headlines. Less noticed is that his new stand puts Kerry back where he first made his name during the Vietnam War: as a voice of the anti-war left.

Whereas Kerry's 2002 vote made him the object of suspicion among anti-war Democrats, who flocked to Howard Dean until that candidacy collapsed, Kerry's new stance places him to the left of the Democratic Party's other major putative presidential candidates. Certainly he has flanked New York Senator Hillary Clinton, widely considered the Democratic front-runner in 2008.

Kerry's proposal calls for a Dayton Accords-like conference, to include the various Iraqi factions, the League of Arab States, Iran, Syria, and the rest of Iraq's neighbors (among others), to try to forge a consensus on Iraq's future; a redeployment of US troops to support roles; and then a withdrawal of US combat troops by year's end.

Snip...

If nothing else, at a time when many major Democrats have adopted a cautious wait-and-see posture on Iraq, a posture that has proved frustrating to the party's liberal activists, John Kerry has finally found his voice.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/05/23/john_kerrys_encore