Joe Biden speaks...and for once it's worth listening to

Yes, the man who has supplanted Joe Lieberman as my least favorite Democratic senator has confirmed what some reality-based folks have suspected all along. Namely, that even the highest-up higher-ups in the Bush administration--including Cheney--have concluded that Situation FUBAR is, well, FUBAR.

"I have reached the tentative conclusion that a significant portion of this administration, maybe even including the vice president, believes Iraq is lost," Biden said. "They have no answer to deal with how badly they have screwed it up. I am not being facetious now. Therefore, the best thing to do is keep it from totally collapsing on your watch and hand it off to the next guy -- literally, not figuratively."

Biden gave the comments in an interview as he outlined an ambitious agenda for the committee, including holding four weeks of hearings focused on every aspect of U.S. policy in Iraq. The hearings will call top political, economic and intelligence experts; foreign diplomats; and former and current senior U.S. officials to examine the situation in Iraq and possible plans for dealing with it. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will probably testify next Thursday to defend the president's new plan, but at least eight other plans will be examined over several sessions of the committee.


This keeps up and I may take back all those "Joe Biden SHUT UP" blog posts.

Oh yeah, and Biden continues:

Biden expressed opposition to the president's plan for a "surge" of additional U.S. troops and said he has grave doubts about whether the Iraqi government has the will or the capacity to help implement a new approach. He said he hopes to use the hearings to "illuminate the alternatives available to this president" and to provide a platform for influencing Americans, especially Republican lawmakers.

"There is nothing a United States Senate can do to stop a president from conducting his war," Biden said. "The only thing that is going to change the president's mind, if he continues on a course that is counterproductive, is having his party walk away from his position."

Biden said that Vice President Cheney and former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld "are really smart guys who made a very, very, very, very bad bet, and it blew up in their faces. Now, what do they do with it? I think they have concluded they can't fix it, so how do you keep it stitched together without it completely unraveling?"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tell us something we don't already know

The MTA is clueless. Man, if you need a place to vent or learn the full story behind mass transit horror stories, check out Gothamist. The MTA admitted that the service was not acceptable on many accounts, from the flooding to the fact that the MTA's website was overwhelmed. Then there's also the fact that the MTA was urging people not to take the subways and opt for a bus instead, only for buses to be (A) few and far between and (B) crowded as anything. They forgot to mention "(C) fucking slow." Don't the people at the MTA feel really stupid when they say shit like this? MTA CEO Lee Sander said, "We really are sorry about the inconvenience that New Yorkers had to deal with. In terms of how it happened, we had three inches of rain in an hour. The system is designed to handle 1.5 inches." This isn't quite as appalling as last year's 9-day Queens blackout--you know, the one where Con Ed lied about the number of places without power--but it still in
Read more

We're the ones we've been waiting for, and all that

Via Blue Wave News , Van Jones' speech at the Campus Progress National Conference, which rang true to this cautiously optimistic liberal. More from Mr. Jones, via HuffPo: We are trying to build a pro-democracy movement in a country that, at least for eight years, was run by [inaudible] authoritarians. And it is not going to be easy. But I tell you, the most important thing I can say is... We feed the fearmongers. We feed the politics of division, by giving it so much attention and letting it fill up the space in our mind. We have to feed the hope. This country is an extraordinary -- I get choked up -- this is an incredible, beautiful country... That little idiot box off in the corner trying to depress you and make you feel like this is a horrible country and everybody believes evil things about the president... it is just not true. Cut it off, just cut it off and walk down the street and talk to real people in this country. They are sophisticated. They are wise. They don't kno
Read more