John Edwards on CNN, February 24, 2002:

I mean, we have three different countries [North Korea, Iran, and Iraq] that, while they all present serious problems for the United States -- they're dictatorships, they're involved in the development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction -- you know, the most imminent, clear and present threat to our country is not the same from those three countries. I think Iraq is the most serious and imminent threat to our country.

And I think they -- as a result, we have to, as we go forward and as we develop policies about how we're going to deal with each of these countries and what action, if any, we're going to take with respect to them, I think each of them have to be dealt with on their own merits.

And they do, in my judgment, present different threats. And I think Iraq and Saddam Hussein present the most serious and most imminent threat.

This was months before he voted for the war, a vote he recanted in a Washington Post op-ed in November of '05.

Lee Bandy of The State has more on Edwards' left turn heading into 2008.