“I wouldn't have gone to war in Iraq ,” I told the Xenia (OH) Daily Gazette . And I told the Valley Courier newspaper in Alamosa , Colorado , that I believe regime changes could have been made in Iraq through inserting operatives to teach about non-violent resistance, like what was used by Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi.

As president, I would immediately institute a measured, U.S. troop step-down. The Iraq War is galvanizing insurgency groups from throughout the Middle East . It's essential we look at why.

As just one example:

We launched the war predicated on finding “Weapons of Mass Destruction” that weren't there. And the tragic irony, I told the Cortez (CO) Journal , is: “ W e have 10,000 Weapons of Mass Destruction aimed all over the world!”

“What if we let the weapons inspectors into Montana ?” I posed to an ABC TV news reporter from Toledo , Ohio .

Estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths are now in the hundreds of thousands. I told the Athens News in Ohio that what we so cavalierly call a war's “inevitable collateral damage,” are: moms, dads, little children…

As president, I would offer a formal apology to the Iraqi people and set up an “Iraq War Victim's Fund (like the 9/11 Victim's Fund.)”

I would pursue U.S. unilateral nuclear disarmament and take the savings (military personnel to operate the program, uranium upgrades, new missiles…) to help rebuild Iraq 's infrastructure. And I would propose using Iraqi and other Middle Eastern firms, not American firms.

In addition, I would try to inspire a “Sister Cities Project,” matching U.S. cities with Iraq cities to increase financial help, etc.

Sincerely trying to reconcile might be just the tonic Iraq needs to recover and for anger towards us, throughout a growing part of the Arab world, to ease.