The John Edwards apology tour continued Thursday, this time stopping at Metropolitan State College to a throng of students eager to see the former vice presidential candidate.

"First off, to anybody in the room that doesn't know it - and you probably know it already - I voted for this war and I was wrong to vote for this war," Edwards said. "I should never have voted for it. I take responsibility for that."

It was the launching point for what he described as "the bleeding sore that is Iraq" and his ideas for trying to solve the crisis there.

Dressed in slacks and an open- collared blue shirt with rolled-up sleeves, he told the crowd of about 600 that escalating the war was wrong and that, if elected president in 2008, he would begin drawing down the number of troops in Iraq immediately.

Edwards also told the crowd it wasn't complicated - outlining a simplified history of the region that basically stated the Sunnis and Baathists ran the country under Saddam Hussein and lost power when the U.S. toppled the regime. The Shiites had been out of power for more than 1,000 years and now that they're in power, they don't want to give it up.

"That is the cause of the violence on the ground in Iraq," Edwards said. "However many American troops are on the ground, that violence will continue until there is a political reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite."

He blasted President Bush for not traveling around the world promoting diplomacy and said the next president should make a concerted effort to meet with foreign leaders on their soil.

Edwards also said America had lost its moral ability to lead and that President Bush has operated under the assumption that you can lead only by power and might instead of inspiring the world. He asked the crowd to look at the U.S. through the eyes of the rest of the world as it allows a genocide to continue in Sudan and children to die from AIDS in Africa.

"Today there will be thousands of children born in Africa with AIDS because their mother can't pay for a $4 dose of medicine," he said. "A whole new generation, and the richest nation on the planet allows it to happen. What would you think? We can't be the country of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. We have to be the light again."

He spent a good portion of the time talking about the need for health care - saying if elected, he would push hard for national health care. He also spoke about the need for a living wage, staking out territory on issues of poverty that he began laying the foundation for in 2004 when he spoke about "The Two Americas."

At no point during his talk, however, did he take any shots at the other Democratic candidates - including the two ahead of him in most of the current polling, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior scholar at the University of Southern California and political analyst, said Edwards has smartly positioned himself to allow the front-runners to take swipes at each other and it may give him a chance to "run up the middle" and take the lead.

"(Edwards) just doesn't have the fundraising ability of the other two," she said. "But he's been through this before and he does have name recognition."

He's also part of a steady stream of candidates coming through Colorado.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson was in Denver last week and Obama is scheduled to be at Metro State on March 18.

Joseph Peha, a 23-year-old who came to the rally, said he thought Edwards had markedly improved his campaigning since seeing him in 2004.

"He's just a lot more confident in his positions," he said. "I'm really happy to see that."

monterod@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5236