Joe Biden, who was said to bring weighty foreign-policy experience to the Obama ticket, has admitted that he in fact opposed the president’s greatest foreign-policy success so far (a big f***ing-policy deal, you might call it). The New York Times reports on a speech he gave yesterday to House Democrats:
He offered, in characteristic Biden-style, an account of the fateful meeting in the White House Situation Room, when Mr. Obama polled members of his war council for their judgment on whether he should give the go-ahead for the raid.
“He went around the table with all the senior people, including the chiefs of staff, and he said, ‘I have to make a decision. What is your opinion?’” Mr. Biden said, in an account later confirmed by the White House.
The president, Mr. Biden said, started with his national security adviser, Tom Donilon, then moved to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and other senior officials, including Leon E. Panetta, then director of the Central Intelligence Agency, who oversaw the raid, before ending up with the vice president.
“Every single person in that room hedged their bet except Leon Panetta,” Mr. Biden recalled. “Leon said go. Everyone else said, 49, 51.”
The president then turned to Mr. Biden. “He said, ‘Joe, what do you think?’ And I said, ‘You know, I didn’t know we had so many economists around the table.’ I said, ‘We owe the man a direct answer. Mr. President, my suggestion is, don’t go. We have to do two more things to see if he’s there.’ ”
The vice president cited the story, he said, to show that “this guy’s got a backbone like a ramrod.”
Wow. The White House is occupied by a gaggle of morons so completely lacking in basic intelligence that only Leon Panetta had the brains to make the right call. Coming in a very distant second, the President was barely able to rise above the cretins he has surrounded himself with, and hesitantly made the obvious call.
Inspiring, no?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think it shows that Biden is the idiot we thought he was.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDid Biden really use the term "ramrod"?
That's gold right there.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBiden is why, as a die-hard conservative, I pray daily for President Obama's health. The fact that this bumbling man is a heartbeat away from the presidency frightens me.
If the media paid half the attention to his foolish comments as they did to Palin's, there would be a popular movement to replace him with Clinton. She has the virtue of intelligence and competency at least.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is a crock. Obama's biggest foreign policy success was the killing of Bin Laden, but many are quick to point out that it was a no brainer and that everyone would have done it. This of course doesn't fit into the campaign's planned narrative ("Obama is a brave leader who makes brave choices", etc). Biden is out there talking about his opinion to boost Obama's image and to shake up the notion that everyone would have ordered the hit.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo every adviser in the room (but perhaps Panetta) couldn't seem to muster a cogent, forceful, case for a particular course (they were all 49/51%)?
What does that say about the quality of advisers Obama has chosen? They can't even decide? Can't make a powerful case for either choice?
It doesn't sound to me that Obama was "ramrod" in this decision. Sounds like he just fell, marginally, on one side, virtually by a mental flip of the coin (given the ambivalence Biden describes).
That's "strength"? Sounds like a feckless president advised by feckless bureaucrats.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI don't believe this story for a second. This is all about making this decision sound like anything but the no-brainer that it obviously was.
That last line gives it away, if it wasn't obvious enough.
Imagine for a second he had decided not to act on actionable intelligence on OBL's whereabouts. It's totally implausible. No president would've been handed that intel and then failed to act.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMy respect for the president just went up. Not because he's got a spine o' steel, but because he's showing that he understands doing the opposite of whatever Biden says is the best course of action.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis story is probably 99% fabrication. And besides, noone commenting on this board has any clues about the pro's and con's involved in making the decision: how certain they were Bin Laden was there, would they be tipping off their intelligence resources, exposing their informants to harm, etc. In any case, at least it shows a President actually leading his foreign policy team instead of deferring all decisions to a chicken hawk with terrible judgment like Cheney.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseComments like this make me wish NRO would give us the option of a thumbs-down.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe second Biden said no, the president instinctively knew that he would order the raid. I have said for years that a sure way to get rich is to ask Biden's advice, and then do the exact opposite.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNot trying to be snide here (honest!) but I'm having trouble grasping the downside of the raid if indeed it proved to be bad intelligence.
That is, special forces land, enter, can't find UBL, then fly off. Do we know how many times that scenario has already played out in secret? No -- we shouldn't know. Presumably, such raids have been happening since 2001.
Maybe I'm giving the government too much credit for keeping covert ops covert. And I do understand the risk of an Iranian-hostage-rescue crack-up, a la Jimmeh Carter... but there, the whole world knew why those helicopters were buzzing over the desert. Here, everything was (appropriately enough) secret. What was the risk?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe downside seems obvious to me: If the incursion involved the killing of innocent civilians or a firefight with Pakistani troops, without the presence of OBL to justify it, it would have been a foreign policy fiasco on par with Somalia, Iran, etc... Remember this was a covert military invasion of a declared ally of the U.S. Hard to imagine in what context that is without risk...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseActually, Joe was referring to actually having to physically restrain Barack Obama as he pulled on a red union suit with an, "I won, Remember?" logo on the chest, grabbed his favorite Glock 40 from a drawer marked, "Bibles&Bullets", and clipped a bullhorn that plays a top secret recording by Al Green that only dogs can hear to his belt.
capcha: "in stitches"
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBut hey, were we not told how Obama was on the golf course when the SEALs lifted off from the base in Afghanistan? Anyone remember Obama in the war room still wearing the jacket he had on coming from the 9th hole?
Biden's full of hot air. He's always been full of hot air. He's just trying to make the spineless Obama look like Patton. Major fail.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJoe bin Biden's cluelessless would be a Big ****in' Deal, except for two factors. One, surely the POTUS knows he's Joe Biden - he'll admittedly say darned near anything, old Joe. That means everybody in the room must be aware that he can't be taken seriously. Second, to the extent that ol' Joe weighs in on any issue, he's usually on the wrong side of it. So if Joe says, "No raid, it's a sure political loser if it goes wrong, not enough upside, too dangerous," everybody *should* react as if Richard Marcinko himself was standing there saying, "I have looked at every angle and I don't see any possible way this could go wrong," and the green light should be lit.
Biden was right in thinking that discussing this interaction would shed some insight into POTUS's thinking. It doesn't exactly reveal POTUS's iron spine though. What it reveals instead is that POTUS isn't a moron, and that he is either smart enough to listen to his defense chiefs and ignore Biden or to have at least figured out that Biden is a contrary indicator and to move in the direction opposite from the one suggested by Joe. Neither alternative reflects badly on Obama, but both reflect terribly on Biden and you'd wonder why a fellow would have told such an unflattering tale, but for the fact that it was told by and about Joe Biden. The fact remains, Joe Biden is one of the few people in D.C. whose judgment one never needs to questioned. It is almost always wrong, and you don't need to question whether he's right because the statistical odds are just too low.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's easy to imagine Joe Biden still saying "hey, pull my finger" with his (adult) children.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePersonally I think it is a ploy.
Going after bin Laden was such an obvious choice to make that it makes it hard for Obama to claim credit for great leadership. But if his staff was against it, and he overruled them? Then he looks like a leader.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI disagree. He deliberately surrounded himself with people as nearly like himself as he could find. They proved how like him they truly are by doing exactly what he did his entire legislative career--when called upon to make a critical choice, they voted present. If he didn't have to (HAVE TO) make a choice, he would have done the same as them.
Selecting a staff made up entirely of people incapable of making decisions may be many things, but it is not a mark of leadership.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd liberals say Dan Quayle was the moron VP? Because he misspelled potato(e)?
Meanwhile, we have "good ol' Joe" who is a walking gag reel yet gets a complete free pass by the mainstream media.
Typical liberal hypocrisy.
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