I thought a lot about this, and decided to post it anyway. Late at night so no one can see it.
Because of the sheer amount of discussion that has accumulated on this issue, I was surprised to see it come up during the VP debate and no one said anything about it. Now why is that? Why it's because an election is at stake and we don't want to discuss anything inconvenient in that regard. Fine.
But this isn't about criticizing Biden. I want to state right here and now that I believe and support Sen. Joe Biden on the statement he made during his debate.
His statement was about the Iraq AUMF vote, and here is what he said:
http://www.cnn.com/...
There's a relatively stable government there now as in Kosovo. With regard to Iraq, I indicated it would be a mistake to -- I gave the president the power. I voted for the power because he said he needed it not to go to war but to keep the United States, the UN in line, to keep sanctions on Iraq and not let them be lifted.
I, along with Dick Lugar, before we went to war, said if we were to go to war without our allies, without the kind of support we need, we'd be there for a decade and it'd cost us tens of billions of dollars. John McCain said, no, it was going to be OK.
And after hearing that statement, I decided to do some research and I looked up Biden's statement on October 9, 2002, this was his floor speech before the vote itself:
So this is a pretty big deal. Words matter. And so I say to my friends, let's go back. Why did the President ask us for a resolution when he sent up the draft resolution? Why? He stated forthrightly why. He said: Because I need to demonstrate that I have support in order not to go to war. That is what he said. He said: You, the Congress, give me overwhelming support. Then the U.N. will know I mean it. Then the Security Council will say if we don't, he will, so we better. That is the reason why we are here. That is the reason, I remind my colleague from Connecticut and my friend from Virginia, why we are here. Otherwise, it is ridiculous--a President saying I don't know whether I want to go to war yet, but declare it.
So I hope people don't start confusing things on this floor. I may not be around here after November--I hope I am; I am up for reelection, but I don't want to be on this floor 6 years from now and have someone stand up and inaccurately say, by the way, back in the year 2002, in October, we adopted a policy of preemption.
Again. This is not an attack on Biden, although I know given the context and the overwhelming support for a different reading of these events, it would appear as if this is an attack on Biden.
It is not.
I have always stood against a certain reading of these events, and I subscribe to a piece written by Media Matters during the election of 2004.
That piece is here:
http://mediamatters.org/...