Reply #42: Here's how it went from my diary (which is upthread)

[beachmom]

But I have concluded this is not the time for me to mount a Presidential campaign. It is time to put my energy to work as part of the majority in the Senate to do all I can to end this war and strengthen our security and our ability to fight the real war on terror.

The people of Massachusetts have given me an incredible privilege to serve, and I intend to work here to change a policy in Iraq that threatens all that I have cared about and fought for since I came home from Vietnam.

(It was at this moment that he got really choked up with the word Vietnam -- his announcement statement was said clearly)

The fact is, what happens here in the next 2 years may irrevocably shape or terribly distort the administration of whichever candidate is next elected President. Decisions are being taken and put into effect today and in the days to come that may leave to the next President a wider war, a war even more painful, more difficult, more prolonged than the war we already have.

Iraq, if we Senators force a change of course, may yet bring stability and an exit with American security intact or it may bring our efforts in the region to a failure that we will all recognize as a catastrophe.

I don't want the next President to find that he or she has inherited a nation still divided and a policy destined to end as Vietnam did, in a bitter or sad legacy