I'm surprised that this hasn't received more attention. It sounds like someone relatively high up on the VZW food chain is telling Chris (and now us) that they don't know what the release date will be because the phone isn't ready, at least from their perspective, and they don't want to risk giving us a date and then failing to meet it for whatever reason.
Unfortunately, this gives us nothing in terms of being able to estimate the release date. Their testing could (and probably) is complete, and is just waiting for the right executive at VZW to sign off on it; or the testing may still be in progress as they work through whatever issues have cropped up.
I think the biggest takeaway here, assuming the e-mail above is valid (no offense intended to to Chris), is that VZW hasn't given us a release date because they don't have a firm date themselves.
Cliff Notes: we still don't know anything, but at least we now have an official excuse from VZW.
*sigh*