"I think the administration has missed a lot of opportunities, in fact, has exacerbated the situation over the last two years with its cutoff of humanitarian assistance and its attitude towards the Aristide administration," Mr. Kerry said. "So they sort of created the environment within which the insurgency could grow and take root, and now they're trying to manage it, I think."

The article continues:

He said that if he were president, he would be pressing Haitian rebels to back off their goal of toppling Mr. Aristide, perhaps by threatening the deployment of an international peacekeeping force.

"I think you've got to be real and threatening," he said. His message to the rebels, he said, would be: "You're not going to take over, you're not kicking him out, this democracy is going to be sustained, we're willing to put in a new government, new prime minister, we're willing to work with you, but you're not going to succeed in your goal of exiling" Mr. Aristide. "And unless that's clear, you can't necessarily stop it in its tracks."

...Though Mr. Kerry acknowledged that he did not fully know the diplomatic strategy of the Bush administration to deal with Haiti's crisis, he speculated that a purposefully timid approach on the part of the Bush administration — "because they hate Aristide" — could be allowing the rebels to move forward with their uprising.

"They could be encouraging, not really putting the hammer down on these people to stop what they're doing," he said.

A reminder: This is a comment on policy and its news value regarding a story on our beat that happens to mention the U.S. presidential campaign, and does not constitute any partisan statement regarding electoral politics - I reserve those for my personal weblog.

What is significant is that Washington's treatment of Haiti is now on the table, in a big way, in the United States, with two distinct visions about how to handle the actual crisis. That is new. In fact, it's news.