This Kerry interview from today's Washington Post suggests that post 9/11 he wouldn't have overthrown the Taliban regime as part of his strategy to go after bin Laden and other senior al Qaeda leaders:
KERRY: …For instance, in response to 9/11, there's clarity. We've got to go kill al-Qaeda.... In fact, I would have thought about starting that war differently. BOB WOODWARD: In what way? KERRY: I believe that during that particular period of time you knew that they [the Taliban and al-Qaeda] had bad habits. They didn't believe that we would necessarily invade. . . . That is an enormous advantage with which to begin any planning. So they are running around in caravans, which we can see from technical means. They're talking on cellphones, which we can follow with technical means. It gave us time to put assets on the ground. There are all kinds of things that we could have done with respect to pinpointing their whereabouts. WOODWARD: This is after 9/11? KERRY: Absolutely. And my instincts would have been much more inclined to have used feint as subterfuge to indicate you might be doing one thing when you're really doing another. . . . I would have been inclined to have used a greater covert effort to put the pressure on Osama bin Laden, at which point I would have been prepared to move major track divisions into position, whether it's the 101st, the 10th Mountain Division, 82nd Airborne, etc. ...Now, I know we had SEALs at Tora Bora. And they wanted to go. I mean, who wouldn't have wanted to go get Osama bin Laden? [T]he bottom line is there wasn't even a sufficient strategy to do that. I would have guaranteed there was. Period.