I wanted to pull out and highlight this clip from Senator Dodd speaking in Portsmouth, NH. In this segment, he talks about last week's Iraq supplemental vote and the need for leadership that will do what is right.

My transcription:

People have been very generous throughout today and yesterday in expressing their gratitude for being one of fourteen votes that was cast on Thursday on this issue, saying it was courageous for you to do what you did. To be candid, there was nothing courageous about it. To me, that was the right thing to do — what's courageous about doing what's right?

What's right is redeploying our troops out of Iraq and getting out of that civil war. That's what we ought to be doing here.

I'm determined to stick with this. We'll be back at this issue very quickly. We have a defense authorization bill, a defense appropriations bill, this supplemental will run out around the middle of September, first of October, so we'll be back at this issue very quickly.

And I'd be less than honest if I didn't tell you I was disappointed that more people either didn't make a decision early enough or be clear enough about it or that not enough people ultimately did what I think was the only right thing to do here.

And it's not only about how wrong this is as a policy, but I frame it in the context of our national security. No one is going to be elected president of the United States in 2008 if they don't make the country feel conscious about the security of our country. And what the policy in Iraq is doing, among other things, is making us far less secure. We're far more vulnerable, we're far more isolated, we're far less secure today as a result of this policy. And every hour that the policy goes on we're in greater and greater and greater danger. So this is about the national security of our nation in my view — and the wrong decision to get us involved and sustain a policy that is isolating us and reducing our moral leadership in the world.

So I'm going to stick with this – I want you to know that. I've got a bad habit about being dogged about things that I care about. On this one, I'm not moving. I want a policy that's going to end up some time this summer or this fall that says we're going to time-certain, we're going to be moving our military out of that civil conflict.

And then we're going to start using a robust diplomacy and politics and economics, engage and talk to the Iranians, deal with the Syrians, start doing what a great nation ought to be doing. And that is acting like a nation that understands how important diplomacy and politics can be to advance good interests and good causes.

I think that's what America wants. It's the kind of leadership we ought to have in the 21st century. And as your president, I'll do it – you have my word on that.

You can view the entirety of Senator Dodd's talk in Portsmouth here.