[sam h]

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Kerry's meely mouth, vague statements about Iraq IMO cost him the election more or less.

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I don't think the evidence supported this. Kerry did well with voters who identified Iraq as one of their most important issues. If Kerry took a hit on foreign policy, it was about more general issues concerning his ability to conduct the war on terror.

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They don't have a policy

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I basically agree. Two things are important to consider, though. First, Bush has botched the situation so badly that there simply are no good policy options. Second, laying out a big alternative vision of foreign policy is not something people do in the year after an election year. Kerry didn't have an alternative solution last year really. But I don't think its surprising that the Dems right now are not going out on a limb to propose something radically different.

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and therefore I think it's fair to say that what they really want is to embarass Bush as much as they can to gain politically.

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Obviously. This is politics after all.

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They don't have a plan and they don't have a vision

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I agree, and this is why they are still in trouble. Even when the other guy's plan and vision are demonstrably terrible, as is the case with Bush, it's hard to win without some proposal of your own.

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my conclusion is that establishing a "democratic" form of government in Iraq isn't very important to the Democrats. That's shameful IMO.

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Since the Bush administration seems so likely to fail in this endeavor anyway, opposing the administration doesn't seem so shameful to me.