When Biden Was HANOI JOE

Senator Joe Biden was vehemently against the first Gulf War. During the buildup to the war Biden spoke about how the war was a mistake from the floor of the US Senate:

"big nations cannot bluff . . . this is a serious mistake . . . when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. We are in a bit of a hole here . . . 95% of the casualties in the coalition will be American . . . It is not preposterous to suggest that we may have an occupying force in Baghdad for years. Maybe a month, but it could be years . . . four hundred thousand Americans sit in the desert ready to launch an assault that would be vastly larger than D-Day in its size and scope."

This is the man who wants to be a "heart beat" away from the presidency.Joe Biden's words on the Senate floor were used by Saddam Husein in an attempt to demoralize the US Troops. Read the story Biden as "Hanoi Joe" Below:

JOE TOLD YOU SO BIDEN IS NEVER WRONG - BECAUSE HE TAKES BOTH SIDES
October 5, 2008The question I wanted to hear Joe Biden answer at Thursday's debate was this: Joe, did you know that you were once the guest speaker on the Saddam Radio Network?

In January 1991, when I was an Army lieutenant, I unfolded myself from the shotgun seat of a deuce-and-a-half truck and stumbled around my unit's newest home, some vast emptiness in the sandbox of Saudi Arabia. We were positioning ourselves for the war that would start that week.

Someone had gotten reception on the radio, which was surprising. We wouldn't have guessed Armed Forces Radio was set up in the vicinity yet. The radio was replaying the Senate's deliberations about whether to authorize the use of force to expel Iraq from Kuwait. The UN had given its blessing and 34 countries had joined our coalition.

Joe Biden was speaking. The more he talked, the more he warned us of disaster. We wilted. This broadcast, it dawned on us, wasn't coming from our colleagues and cheerleaders at the relentlessly optimistic Armed Forces Radio. It was obviously enemy propaganda broadcast by Iraq to crush our spirits.

Biden went on for thousands of words about how "big nations cannot bluff . . . this is a serious mistake . . . when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. We are in a bit of a hole here . . . 95% of the casualties in the coalition will be American . . . It is not preposterous to suggest that we may have an occupying force in Baghdad for years. Maybe a month, but it could be years . . . four hundred thousand Americans sit in the desert ready to launch an assault that would be vastly larger than D-Day in its size and scope."

Gulp. "Vastly larger than D-Day" - in which we suffered tens of thousands of casualties?

Biden's words hit us on two levels: one is that we feared he was right. Didn't he know more than us? This was my first salaried job. And even if he was wrong, he was an indication of how little moral support we felt from back home. The 1991 Gulf War is the only kind of war that actually meets the liberal standard: a huge international coalition assembled to reverse undeniably illegal activity, clearly defined and limited and feasible aims, no long-term occupying force, UN approval.

Yet Biden voted against it.

In 2002, when he was thinking about running for president, he voted for a much riskier war with Iraq.

But in case it went awry, he issued lots of dire warnings so he could be a prophet of either defeat or victory.

In speeches given on Jan. 31 and Feb. 4, 2003, Biden expressed confidence that the war would go badly - and well. He said the war was justified - and not justified. He predicted a lot of bad stuff that did happen, and a lot that didn't happen. He predicted every possible outcome. So in Thursday's debate he wanted credit for being right.

In those speeches he switched from hawk to dove and back in virtually every paragraph. He underlined what senators are: talkers. If anything they vote for goes badly they can just say they would have done it better. If something they voted against goes well, even better: that vote is forgotten, like Biden's vote against Desert Storm. There's no scandal, no interest in rehashing the details, when something works out.

One paragraph from the 1/31/03 speech is a masterfog of obfuscation. Months after voting to authorize force, he says, "So to make a comparative point, I think Saddam Hussein is a genuine danger and cannot be left unattended. Do I think it should have been moved front and center to the degree it has now? My answer to that is no, but it has. I think there are other things that are of a much more immediate concern, but that's not where we are right now. And so what do we do? What do we do?"

To the average voter, Biden was wrong on both of the two biggest wars of the last 20 years. Picture a Biden presidency. A baffled man sits at a desk debating himself. "What do we do? What do we do?"