Campaign rhetoric often reveals more than the campaigner wants voters to know.

The latest "slip" came on Feb. 10 when Democrat Sen. Barack Hussein Obama told an audience that troops who died in Iraq gave their lives for nothing.

"During his first press conference as a presidential candidate at Iowa State University, Obama, discussing his opposition to the Iraq war, said the war 'should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged, and on which we've now spent $400 billion, and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted."

The statement seems to fall in line with those of other Democrat current and former presidential candidates. It is reminiscent of John Kerry's statement that American troops in Iraq are poorly educated, and former N.C. Sen. John Edwards' frequent calls to discontinue war funding and bring all troops home now.

Obama and Kerry later apologized for their remarks. Edwards continues his call for withdrawing all financial support for U.S. men and women fighting in the Mideast, and bringing troops home now.

Anyone can misspeak, but the real question is whether the statement reveals the speaker's true, subconscious beliefs. The slick-talking Obama is coached by legions of political advisers and image polishers who have warned him to distance himself from rival Hilary Clinton, who has declined to apologize for her vote to enter the war.

Obama was not in the Senate at the time of the vote but opposed the war from the start. He has proposed a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq to be completed by the end of March 2008, and he told reporters he was uncertain how Clinton intended to end the conflict.

A first-term senator and former Illinois state legislator, Obama has quickly jumped into the top tier of a crowded Democratic presidential field along with Clinton and Edwards. His early opposition to the war is a centerpiece of his stump speech.

On Jan. 30, Obama introduced the Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007. The plan would halt escalation and require a redeployment of American forces from Iraq.

"If I were running al Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008, and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats," Australian Prime Minister John Howard said, speaking on "Sunday," a TV show on Australia's Nine Network. "I think that will just encourage those who want to completely destabilize and destroy Iraq, and create chaos and a victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for an Obama victory."

The Democratic presidential hopeful said if the Australian prime minister was "ginned up to fight the good fight in Iraq," he needs to send another 20,000 Australians to the war. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of empty rhetoric."

Obama's "slip" about wasted lives in Iraq comes not long after he spoke to the Democratic Leadership Council and praised Pennsylvania Democrat Rep. John Murtha's war record. Murtha has called for immediate steps towards U.S. military redeployment out of Iraq, hopefully in six months.

While Obama is a relative newcomer to the Iraqi debate, Edwards in August 2006 said the United States should start pulling troops out of Iraq immediately. The South Carolina-born former senator told reporters America should "make it clear (to Iraqis) we are leaving, and the best way is to start leaving. We should take 40,000 combat troops out now."

Edwards said he would ask the country's military leaders for a strategy "to have the (rest of the) troops out in roughly 12 to 18 months."

Speaking on CNN, Edwards said the following: "Here's what I believe: I believe that an escalation of our presence in Iraq is an enormous mistake. I think this [Sen. John] McCain [R-AZ] doctrine doesn't make any sense. There is no military solution to what's happening in Iraq. Everyone knows that. The only solution -- potential solution -- is a political solution. I mean, the Iraqis are going to have to decide whether they're actually going to have a representative government that includes everybody, including the Sunnis. And that's the only way to ultimately tamp down this violence."

When reporters asked Edwards for a concise version of his policy on Iraq he said, "Let's start leaving."

Many cast Edwards as the most far-left presidential candidate. Then Obama entered the race. Most political pundits now believe Obama has far outdistanced Edwards in his liberal leanings. He has staked out positions on the war and health care popular with liberals. He has marched with union pickets and championed a new war on poverty. He crusaded across the country to raise the minimum wage, joining one rally alongside Sen. Ted Kennedy, a liberal icon.

"I, like all of you, have evolved," Edwards, 53, recently told a Dartmouth College audience.

"The cynic in me would say it's Howard Dean's rhetoric with John Edwards' smile," said Chuck Todd, editor of The Hotline, a daily political digest. "He seems to have adopted sharper elbows. He's not going to be running the same tone of a campaign that he ran four years ago, when he never, ever wanted to go negative."

Nowhere has any leftward tilt been more pronounced than on Iraq. Running for vice president in 2004, Edwards criticized the Bush administration's management of the war but defended his own 2002 vote authorizing it. A year later, he recanted that vote.

He recently criticized a nonbinding resolution opposing the president's troop surge as an empty gesture, implicitly chiding Democrats who support it. Edwards got 80,000 people to sign electronic petitions to Congress to block funding for what he calls an "escalation."

"He's shown a real capacity to grow and learn," said Tim Carpenter, executive director of the Progressive Democrats, an anti-war group. "A lot of people are kind of romanticizing a little bit in watching his transformation."

Edwards acknowledged to The New York Times recently that he's a different candidate. And he is.