John Kerry: “I am going to speak, obviously, a little bit in an abbreviated fashion at this point, and then I will reserve time and…”

“I am going to speak, obviously, a little bit in an abbreviated fashion at this point, and then I will reserve time and speak again later because of the way things have worked out. I want to thank the Senator from Wisconsin. I want to thank him for his foresight and his leadership with respect to this issue, and I also want to thank him for his cooperation and efforts in the last days to put together what I think is a reasonable and sensible approach to how we deal with an obviously complicated situation. Let me say that I have heard this debate over the course of the last days and I have listened carefully and I am saddened, in a sense--but I guess I have grown to expect it in the course of our politics--that there is an awful lot of characterization going around, an awful lot of stereotype sloganeering which tries to characterize something as other than what it is. It is what we have come to. The fact is that this amendment is not what it is being characterized as. I have heard a number of people say it is a precipitous withdrawal. I have heard obviously the words ``cut and run'' and other words used many times. Let me first point out the differences between this and the other amendment that has already been debated. First of all, this is binding. The other amendment is a sense of the Senate, and our troops and our country deserve more than a sense of the Senate. They deserve a policy. Secondly, we have a date; the other is open-ended.…”