it's unlikely that I'd be sitting here asking you questions

I think it is to move forward. The concern that many of my constituents in Illinois express is that we went into Iraq, at least in their minds, because of a very specific threat of terror, not tyranny but terror.

And we are now going to be spending at least $200 billion in Iraq, and we have lost over 1,300 lives and it is counting.

What's the status of our troops, and what's our exit strategy?

I think that may be true, in fact, for just the National Guard, alone.

So the fact that there is a link somewhere between terror and tyranny is not sufficient for us to be making decisions about spending $200 billion to $300 billion or sacrificing the lives of American servicemen and women.

But my job, as a Senator, is to make sure that we're basing these decisions on facts and that I probe and not simply take it on faith that good decisions are being made.

I think part of the reason you were hesitant to talk about the torture issue yesterday had to do with the fact that you don't want to define 'torture' too much, because you want a little bit of wiggle room.

I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America, there is the United States of America.

This is a guy who has better prepared for the presidency than anybody I've ever seen. Enormously engaging, enormously caring, and enormously intelligent.

The hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him too.