Biden on Iraq War Vote: 'Mistake I Made Was Trusting President Bush'

[DonViejo]

By Josh Feldman Jul 13th, 2019, 4:52 pm

Former Vice President Joe Biden has gotten criticism on the campaign trail for his 2002 vote in favor of the Iraq War. Whether or not it ends up as an issue for voters––a recent poll indicated it may be for some––Biden addressed the issue.

Biden has previously expressed regret for his vote. When asked today in New Hampshire about it, he had this to say:

“The mistake I made was trusting President Bush, who gave me his word he was using it for the purpose of getting inspectors in to see what was going on, whether they were producing nuclear weapons.”

Biden gave a speech recently on ending “forever wars” that, as CNN politics reporter Vanessa Yurkevich noted today, did not mention the Iraq War.

video
https://www.mediaite.com/election-2020/biden-on-iraq-war-vote-mistake-i-made-was-trusting-president-bush/

[McKim]

1. Good, Now I Can Vote for Him

I am so glad he is apologizing and talking about ending the Forever Wars. It made me sick to vote for Hillary because of her War on Iraq vote. I guess he learned his lesson about believing republicans. Now I can vote for him with a clear conscience. And yes this matters hugely for many of us. My brother in law died for a lie in Vietnam in 1967 and our family has not been the same since. It is my number one issue in the presidential elections.

[rickford66]

2. Trusted Bush ??

We need that "Com'on Ted" guy to do a "Com'on Joe" clip.

[Applegate]

3. That's weak sauce. Millions of us knew better.

[jalan48]

4. Umm, Bush and Co openly steal the 2000 election and Biden still trusted him?

That's some crazy shit.

[Hortensis]

7. I don't think ANY of them trusted Bush so much as hoped

they could. They make simplistic black-white statements now, knowing any nuance at all will merely confuse the ignorant and be twisted by the malicious, but Hussein was breaking the leash we'd had on him for a decade following his invasion of Kuwait, knowing Bush didn't have the authority to stop him. They needed to give it to him and truly did hope he wouldn't abuse it.

Btw, those 10 years we had kept Hussein confined to a third of his nation to put a stop to his genocide in the rest? We hadn't lost a single pilot in those flyovers.

But whose fault was it that most Democratic voters believed Bush's lies about WMD, disproved BEFORE we sent a single division, or were passively uncaring? Not our leaders! God knows they tried to inform the feckless ones. I watched as, for a full year before the actual invasion, top retired people from the military to the state department, to every other field of expertise, such as General Arnold Schwarzkopf, commander of the United States Central Command and of the coalition forces in the First Gulf War, appeared on TV and wrote op-eds in all major papers telling the nation it was a lie. Remember diplomat Joe Wilson and his report to the people, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," which lead to treason at the highest levels in the outing of his wife, Valerie Plame?

All for naught. The people had a job to do and didn't do it.