It's beyond me why Wolf Blitzer called on Robert Kerrey as a counterpose to Richard Perle on Sunday's CNN Late Edition. Perle, as usual, was unflappable, though Blitzer treated him with kid gloves. But Kerrey chimed in every few minutes not to challenge Perle but to say things like "I agree with him." Huh? That's a debate? Kerrey showed that he is miles and miles behind the rest of the Democrats, even the pro-war ones, who are tectonically shifting ground now that it is convenient to do so. Maybe Kerrey wants consistency points for his stand. He took pains to note yesterday, "I wrote the Iraq Liberation Act," the Ahmed Chalabi-inspired law in 1998 that among other things committed U.S. funds for Chalabi's INC openly (as opposed to earlier covert funding) and committed the United States to "regime change" in Iraq. Alas.

But Kerrey's stand was reminiscent of John Kerry's 2004 confusion. At one point he said that if we "stay the course" as Bush says, then we will "cut and run" because Congress will cut off funding for the war. What does that mean, exactly? Kerrey utterly failed to articulate what he would suggest we do, other than to agrree with Perle that we need to win the war. (Perle: "Yes I think we can win this war.")

Perle, of course, was his provocative self. "All this talk about exit strategies is an encouragement to Al Qaeda." And: "If we were to abandon Iraq, that would be the greatest gift that we could give to the terrorists." I guess that sets the marker down: some (like me) argue that staying in Iraq is the greatest gift to bin Laden we could give, also the argument made by Mike Scheuer, who ran the CIA's OBL unit.

On intelligence, Perle attacked those who accuse the administration of lying about intelligence. But he added, slyly, "Some people [in the administration] may have characterized the intelligence in a way that intelligence analysts might not have wished." Indeed.