Apparently, the hard facts of war need not inconvenience the Senate at this time. And the solemn duties that war imposes on us can be postponed indefinitely.

I hope and pray we can avert this crisis. I hope I'm wrong, but there's nothing in Saddam's record to indicate that he's going to keep any commitments.

There's no really good solution to getting out of it. It's just a question of among all the relatively poor answers, what's the one that is the best one of the group.

But I do not believe that the Bush administration decided that they would set up a scenario that gave us the rationale for going into Iraq.

I'm embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics, I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in politics to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble. Please be assured I won't make the same mistake again.

You cannot remove the military option from the table, but it is a totally undesirable option and one that can only be considered after all other options are attempted.