When former Vice President Joe Biden was asked about his vote to invade Iraq in 2002 during CNN’s Democratic debate Tuesday, he didn’t claim he really opposed the decision like he had done in debates prior. He didn’t defend the “yes” vote for war. He apologized flat out, a move critics of his have been waiting on for quite some time. “It was a mistake and I acknowledge that,” Biden said.
The apology followed President Donald Trump’s decision to authorize an airstrike killing Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani in Iraq, a move that has sparked fear of retaliation and for the safety of U.S. troops and diplomats in the Middle East. But unlike Trump, who is feverishly defending his decision, Biden has been contending recently that his vote to support invading Iraq under then-president George W. Bush was a mistake.
The Democratic politician wasn’t quite there yet in July of 2003 when he said on video that he would again vote to support Bush during a speech at the Brookings Institution. At the time, Biden was acting as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a central voice in the controversy regarding the potential war with Iraq, The Washington Post reported. “Nine months ago, I voted with my colleagues to give the president of the United States of America the authority to use force, and I would vote that way again today. It was the right vote then and it would be a correct vote today,” Biden said. “... Contrary to what some in my party might think, Iraq was a problem that had to be dealt with sooner, rather than later. So I commend the president.”
In June the very next year, Biden similarly kept to his position but with a caveat in an opinion piece in the New Republic: “A year and a half ago, I voted to give President Bush the authority to use force in Iraq. I still believe my vote was just—but the president’s use of that authority was unwise in ways I never imagined.” Biden didn't acknowledge he had made a mistake in supporting the war until NBC’s Meet the Press in November 2005, according to The Washington Post. “It was a mistake to assume the president would use the authority we gave him properly,” Biden said.
Now a presidential contender, Biden has been more willing to admit the error of his past ways. In the Democratic presidential debate July 31 he said: “I did make a bad judgment, trusting the president saying he was only doing this to get inspectors in and get the U.N. to agree to put inspectors in."
In the very next statement, however, he added a claim that just didn’t hold up to the Post’s fact-checkers: "From the moment ‘shock and awe’ started, from that moment, I was opposed to the effort, and I was outspoken as much as anyone at all in the Congress and the administration.”
Although Biden said in an edited C-SPAN video posted online by IPA Media that he was critical of earlier White House drafts of a resolution to authorize U.S. force in Iraq in 2002, the Post reported he “did not forthrightly oppose the conflict once it started.” "I'll vote for this because we should support compelling Iraq to make good on its obligations to the United Nations," the then-senator said Oct. 10, 2002. "I'm among those who had serious reservations about, flat-out straight opposition, to the first draft proposed by the White House on September 19."
Biden then:
Biden now: