(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  This war must end now.  In, in ‘05, this is what Joe Biden was saying:  “We can call it quits and withdraw from Iraq.  I think that would be a gigantic mistake.  Or we can set a deadline for pulling out, which I fear will only encourage our enemies to wait us out—equally a mistake.” You’ve changed your mind.

SEN. BIDEN:  Well, I have changed my mind, but I haven’t changed my mind in any fundamental way…

September 26, 2007:  The Senate passed Biden’s amendment "calling for creation of a federal system of government in Iraq with regions divided along ethnic lines."

On the result of Biden’s statements and actions, Michael Rubin recently wrote:

“The November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate …found that Iran had pursued a nuclear weapons program until 2003. Although Biden's embrace of engagement coincided with Iran's nuclear warhead work, he acknowledged no error. He told reporters on Dec. 4 that Bush had "misrepresented" the intelligence in a drive to war and declared the same day, "You cannot trust this president."  Such poor judgment was not lost on Iranian leaders. Indeed, one of Khatami's top aides suggested that they came to count on it…Biden’s political games have made him Tehran’s favorite senator. As Gen. David Petraeus struggled to unite Iraqis across the ethnic and sectarian divide, Iran’s Press TV seized on Biden’s plan for partitioning Iraq and featured his statements with the headline “US plans to disintegrate Iraq.” Biden’s attack-dog statements about U.S. policy failures emboldened Iranian hard-liners to defy diplomacy. In the Dec. 7, 2007, official sermon, Ayatollah Mohammad Kashani speaking on behalf of Iran’s supreme leader, declared, “This Senator [Biden] correctly says Israel could not suppress Hizbullah in Lebanon, so how can the U.S. stand face-to-face with a nation of 70 million? This is the blessing of the Guardianship of the Jurists [the theocracy] . . . which plants such thoughts in the hearts of U.S. senators and forces them to make such confessions.” The crowd met his statement with refrains of “Death to America.”

In April 2008 Biden remained convinced the surge was a failure.  As an early rebuttal to upcoming testimony by Gen. David Petraeus Biden said, "The purpose of the surge was to bring violence in Iraq down so that its leaders could come together politically… Violence has come down, but the Iraqis have not come together." He later added, "There is little evidence the Iraqis will settle their differences peacefully any time soon."  

By July 2008,  Iraq had “met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.”  According to a report this week, “The U.S. military will hand over responsibility for the security of Anbar Province, once a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency and one of the most violent regions in Iraq, to the Iraqi government as early as Monday, Iraqi and U.S. officials said.”

Many have recently pointed to comments Biden made about Barack Obama in August of 2007:  "I think he can be ready, but right now I don't believe he is. It's awful hard, with only a little bit of experience to have a clear sense of what you would do on the most critical issues facing us today."   That is very true, but Obama’s choice of Biden to be his foreign policy expert gives us a good idea of how an Obama-Biden administration would handle such matters if elected.

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