Posted on 07/01/2006 10:18:29 PM PDT by West Coast Conservative
After more than 30 years in the United States Senate and nearly 20 years after his first try for his party’s Presidential nomination, Joseph Biden has no doubts about making another run for the White House.
“I’m in,” the Delaware Democrat said Friday as he began a five-day visit to the first-in-the-nation primary state.
“I know I’m supposed to hedge, but I’m in.”
Biden dropped out of the 1988 nomination race amid allegations of plagiarism. He then suffered a cerebral aneurysm virtually on the eve of the New Hampshire primary.
He recalls being given a 30 percent chance of surviving.
“I’m lucky,” he said. “I’m a respecter of fate. But barring something like that happening to me or my family, I am in.”
Biden said he won’t be surprised if, as the fourth longest-serving member of the Senate, he’s labeled the “consummate insider.”
But, he said, the label doesn’t really apply.
Biden, 63, realizes that among the hard left activists in his party, his stance on the Iraq war — to stay and fight until the job is done — is unpopular. But he is asking for their trust that a “neo-isolationist” foreign policy is the worst possible alternative for the country at this point in history.
Regarding the Iraq war, terrorism, and overall foreign policy, Biden considers himself a “muscular Democrat.”
In an interview at the Bedford Village Inn, Biden said the Bush administration’s policy has made the United States more vulnerable to terrorism, not less.
The ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden said his “bluntness” and the fact that he shuns the Washington “political rounds” and “embassy rounds” will show voters he is not typical of the Capitol Hill genre.
“But the very thing that may prevent me from being viewed as the consummate insider is the very thing that may get me in trouble — and that is a tendency to say what I think,” he said.
While he is employing consultants, such as long-time friend former Democratic national chairman David Wilhelm, who managed Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, Biden said, “I’ll have my counsel be my own counsel.”
While admitting to being “agnostic” on what he considers less important issues, Biden said, “There are certain core things I’m not prepared to back off on,” including, he said, a belief that Sens. John Kerry and Russell Feingold’s calls to withdraw troops from Iraq by a specified date in mid-2007 is a mistake.
Biden said 2008 may also be “the one year maybe in the better part of a century when it’s much better to be a senator than a governor. I don’t think the country is looking for on-the-job training.”
He said four of the seven Presidents he has served with were former governors, and each “took at least two years to figure out what their foreign policy was. And I think the public is looking for someone who seems to have strength and the substance, the intelligence, to implement what he or she says."
Biden said his Senate experience “is the thing that’s given me the confidence to believe I’m the best qualified person to be President. I’m wrong about a lot of things, but I haven’t been very wrong about the foreign policy side of the equation.”
A key missing component of George W. Bush’s foreign policy, Biden said, is the ability to “project to the world what your values are, and what you value.”
“We need a much, much, much more robust doctrine of public diplomacy,” said Biden, including programs not unlike the cold war’s Radio Free Europe.
He said Donald Rumsfeld should resign as defense secretary in the wake of the Haditha killings to show the world “we take responsibility for mistakes and we’re ready to change.”
The United States must remain the world’s most powerful force by expanding the military and moving from reliance on high-tech weapons “to having a force large enough to be able to deal with the exigencies of the world.”
But even as a “muscular Democrat,” he said, “the rules of engagement are very different for me.
“It’s a matter of having to rebuild alliances by rebuilding faith in our country. Other countries don’t doubt our physical might. They doubt our judgment. That’s where we’ve been so badly damaged.”
Biden said a U.S. Supreme Court decision last week outlawing military tribunals for detainees suspected of terrorism was valuable.
“When we depart from the rule of law, does it help us or hurt us in our overall fight and objective, to take on terror?” said Biden. “It hurts us, and the court’s decision is positive and will help us in the international community.”
Biden said he proposed opening discussions with Iran immediately after 9/11, when thousands marched in the streets to show empathy for the United States. “There was an opportunity because the Iranians were worried about terror turning on themselves.”
He said Bush refused to negotiate.
Biden said Bush correctly handled Afghanistan, “but then the hubris began. We defeated the Taliban almost too quickly, and (the administration) immediately turned their attention away from solidifying Afghanistan, nailing the Taliban and bin Laden, and turning to this new adventure (in Iraq).
“In retrospect, it’s clear to me they had no intention of doing anything other than going to war in Iraq,” Biden said. “This is going to (go) down as the single most tragic foreign policy mistake of this century.”
Biden said that if the United States had not gone to Iraq, Saddam Hussein, “left unfettered,” would have gained access to a nuclear weapon in five to seven years.
But if “we had kept the no-fly zone going, inspections, and if the Kurds had continued building a serious state that was growing, you would have continued to put pressure on Saddam, and I think we would have eventually brought Saddam down in a process where his own military would have decided he was too much of an impediment for them.”
Biden said that with Saddam at least contained, “we could have been able to keep the rest of the world with us and focused on really doing what the President promised us. By now, we would have crushed the Taliban and would have had a much better chance of having eradicated the bulk of al-Qaida and bin Laden.”
Now, Iranian leaders "like things just the way they are," said Biden. "We’re tied down and there is no full-blown civil war.
"The irony of all ironies is that Tehran is much more secure today because Saddam’s gone and the Taliban is gone," he said. "They ought to be sending us a 'thank you' note.
"It did not have to be this bad."
With Gore, Kerry, Edwards, Hillary and the rest it should be fun to watch the lunacy
yeah, we shouldda left Saddam alone..../s
'BAGHDAD: Saddam Hussein and his former top army commanders will go on trial on August 21 on charges of killing tens of thousands of Iraq's Kurds in 1988 in a military operation to force them from their villages.
Kurds, whose northern region is still haunted by the seven- month 'Anfal' campaign, have long sought justice and want the former president to face the death penalty, as he does in a current trial over killings of Shias.
Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi said seven defendants including Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid or 'Chemical Ali', would stand trial in the new case.
All seven face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Saddam and Majid face the additional graver charge of genocide, which also carries the death penalty. Saddam is currently being tried only for crimes against humanity.
'Anfal' meaning "spoils of war", is a term taken from a verse in the Koran that calls for terror to be struck into the hearts of unbelievers. Mustard gas and nerve agents were used to drive villagers from their homes.
The campaign devastated Kurdistan, and the mountainous region bordering Turkey has never fully recovered. By some estimates 4,500 villages were destroyed and hundreds of thousands of people killed, tortured or displaced.'
he’s labeled the “consummate insider.”
-I thought that was "communist insider"
Swaths of Stupid Senators.
We've got Kerry, Clinton, Biden, Edwards (former Senator, and it pains me to type that), maybe Feingold, and maybe a couple of others. Gore might run, and he's an ex-Senator as well. Then there are the governors and ex-governors like Warner, maybe Corzine.
It's going to be better than 04.
So Biden's in?
Excellent news for the Republicans.
Biden doesn't have crap.. he's like the Breck Girl... what's his name? Edwards!
Biden: "Still clueless, After Allll These Years"
Idiot 'brigade', not sure if brigade denotes a numerical amount...it was 9 last time around, maybe they'll make it a dozen soon, and 'dirty dozen' could be tossed around perhaps.
Some clown on my street actually had a Kucinich bumper sticker in the last presidential election.
so he'll run against Bush in the 2008 election? :)
This is going to be a riot to watch them eat their own....(popping popcorn, putting beer on ice) pulling up chair....
I guess Biden is not aware that GW Bush is not running in 2008.
Shhhh. That is a secret.
or is that too long?
Let's give Biden some credit. At least he isn't running for President because he knows he won't be reelected to the Senate. :)
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