The breathtaking nature of Senator Kerry’s criticism of President Bush and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld for their plan to withdraw 12,000 American troops from the Korean peninsula we noted yesterday. What took us aback was that Mr. Kerry made his name calling for American troops to be withdrawn from Vietnam and now wants them to be brought home from Iraq but apparently thinks that a good place for American troops is serving as a human tripwire, 50 years after an armistice, for a South Korea that is prosperous enough to defend itself.

Well, it turns out that Mr. Kerry’s objection was even more breathtaking than we originally thought. The Republican National Committee and William Kristol called to our attention to the fact that less than three weeks before Mr. Kerry criticized Mr. Bush for the troop realignment, the candidate himself proposed such a realignment. Asked as recently as August 1 about American troops in Iraq, Mr. Kerry replied on ABC’s “This Week,” “I think we can significantly change the deployment of troops not just there but elsewhere in the world. In the Korean peninsula perhaps, in Europe perhaps.”

By August 18, Mr. Kerry had done one of his celebrated flip flops, demanding to know, “Why are we withdrawing unilaterally 12,000 troops from the Korean peninsula, at the very time we are negotiating with North Korea, a country that really has nuclear weapons?” In the coming days, we are going to see some of the greatest divers in the world attempt to do double and even triple – and maybe even quadruple – flip flops. They won’t outclass Mr. Kerry.