Joe Biden update: Iraq one of Obama's 'great achievements'

[BMT (RIP)]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/02/joe-biden-update-larry-king-iraq-obama-sarah-palin.html


BMT

[Ret10Echo]

At first I was confused by the statement....:confused:


Then I remembered it was Smokin' Joey B.

All is well. We are in good hands.

[afchic]

Wow, just wow.

So whatever is wrong is still Bush's fault, but whatever is good is due to Obama. nice to know:eek:

[18DWife]

Insanity ....

[Sigaba]

Wow, just wow.

So whatever is wrong is still Bush's fault, but whatever is good is due to Obama. nice to know:eek:It is good to see that you're finally catching on. The trephination czar, pictured here (http://www.bbc.co.uk/norfolk/content/images/2005/03/15/davros_dalek_resurrection_terry_malloy_400_400x300 .jpg) with a trusty assistant, is clearly doing a good job.

Stand by for transmission of latest upgrade...

[Tatonka316]

... so it is Bush's fault that the annointed One is successful in Iraq??? That makes perfect cent's - and that is all O is worth!!!

molon labe:boohoo

[craigepo]

Guys, come on. What else does Biden have to say? He has to say something. I would compare it to a really fat, ugly girl in the swimsuit competition at the Miss America competition. If you're the announcer, you don't say "What the hell is that?" or "How did she get in here?". You say something like "Well, she certainly walks well in her high heels".

[incarcerated]

I am very optimistic about -- about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration....


Hmmm…blame Bush for the economy….take credit for Iraq…
Gosh, it really IS a mental disorder!

[Sigaba]

The source is an article from the on-line edition of the New York Times that is available here (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/world/middleeast/11iraq.html?pagewanted=print).February 11, 2010
Leader Faulted on Using Army in Iraqi Politics
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and ANTHONY SHADID

TIKRIT, Iraq — The Iraqi Army’s Fourth Division cordoned off the provincial council building here overnight on Tuesday and showed no sign on Wednesday of leaving. It was the latest in a series of actions by the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki that have infuriated his political opponents, while raising doubts about the strength of the country’s laws and democratic institutions.

In a dispute over the provincial council’s legal powers to appoint a governor, Mr. Maliki ordered in the military here — for the second time — to exert his influence. American military commanders and diplomats expressed alarm at his willingness to use force.

“You have the law on your side,” Col. Henry A. Arnold III, commander of the First Infantry Division’s Fourth Brigade, told a council member outside the besieged building on Wednesday morning. “Maliki knows it. The Americans know it. And they’re going to keep reminding him of it.”

The intervention in Tikrit, a densely Sunni Arab area near Saddam Hussein’s home village, occurred during an increasingly tense election campaign that has heightened fears of politically tinged violence. It highlighted what Mr. Maliki’s critics have denounced as an abusive use of the law and the security forces to settle political disputes and jockey for advantage in the parliamentary elections, scheduled for March 7.

The political turmoil convulsing Iraq stems not just from suspenseful elections in which Mr. Maliki, a Shiite who has allied with several Sunni politicians, appears to be losing popular support and potentially his chances for re-election.

It also stems from an untested separation of powers, opaque back-room agreements and a loose fidelity to the country’s laws, whose interpretation often depends on who is reading them.

“Iraq is like a sick person,” the speaker of Parliament, Ayad al-Samarrai, said at a recent news conference. “All its organs are ailing.”

In just the last week, Mr. Maliki’s government has acted with, at best, disputed legal authority.

In Diyala Province, a leading candidate from one of the main blocs challenging Mr. Maliki’s political coalition, known as State of Law, was arrested Sunday night by special forces sent from Baghdad only days after he took part in a recorded debate in which he criticized the security forces.

Warrants are said to have been issued for five other members of that province’s legislature on charges that remain unclear.

When an appeals court last week reversed in part the disqualification of hundreds of candidates who had been barred because of reported ties to Mr. Hussein’s Baath Party, Mr. Maliki denounced the ruling as illegal. He later met with parliamentary leaders and the chairman of Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council to hash out a compromise that opponents said illustrated the undue political pressure exerted by Mr. Maliki on a supposedly independent judiciary.

“A prime minister who should be the first defender of the Constitution, the first defender of the supremacy of law and law and order in the country — and this incidentally is the name of his group — should be the first person to defend a decision of the court and the judiciary,” said Ayad Allawi, a former prime minister whose bloc has emerged as a potent rival to Mr. Maliki’s, in a recent interview.

The process for disqualifying candidates accused of Baathist backgrounds was so murky that foreign diplomats, United Nations officials and even Iraqi officials knew little about what was happening — and are still in the dark. The list of those disqualified and the evidence for supporting their disqualification still have not been made public.

A committee of Parliament at one point called for a “withdrawal of confidence” in the appeals court, an act that lacked any legal foundation.

An American official, referring to the disqualification process, said, “The emotional weight of this issue is too heavy for the nascent democratic institutions to manage.”

The confrontation in Tikrit began with the newly elected provincial council’s vote in October to dismiss the governor of Salahuddin Province, Mtasher Hussein Ulaiwi, claiming negligence. Mr. Ulaiwi was elected by the council last year after provincial elections that were intended to expand the powers of Iraq’s regions to govern themselves after decades of authoritarian control from Baghdad.

“The Iraqi government is used to using the army to settle its problems,” one council member, Abdullah Ejbarah, a former general in Mr. Hussein’s Republican Guard, said Wednesday at the council’s building.

The dispute has clearly become part of the larger electoral battle in Iraq. Mr. Maliki has sided with the former governor’s party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, whose support he is likely to need after the national elections if he hopes to remain in office. The party includes prominent Sunni leaders in Baghdad, among them Mr. Samarrai, the speaker of Parliament.

For weeks after his dismissal, Mr. Ulaiwi refused to leave office, appealing to Iraq’s federal court and suing the council’s chairman on charges that he had a criminal record and a falsified high school diploma.

Mr. Maliki intervened first with a letter refusing to recognize the governor’s dismissal. When the federal court upheld the council’s actions, though, he ordered the governor removed from office. Then he ordered the army’s Fourth Division to occupy the building on the night of Jan. 20 to block the council from seating a new governor, elected by a council vote of 20 to 2.

That action shut down many of the province’s basic functions until Feb. 7, when the first occupation ended after behind-closed-doors negotiations in Baghdad that allowed the appointment of an acting governor. According to members of the council, however, Mr. Maliki’s aides are still insisting on influencing the choice of governor.

“We are just adhering to the law,” the acting governor, Ahmed Abdul Jabbar Abdul Karim, said in his office on Tuesday, only hours before the provincial council building was cordoned off. “You want my opinion? There is no law today in Baghdad.”

Mr. Maliki’s government has said nothing publicly about the intervention of the army.

The Americans in Salahuddin — including commanders of the Third Infantry Division and Colonel Arnold’s brigade, as well as the State Department’s provincial reconstruction team, at a sprawling base outside Tikrit — have been caught in the middle of the dispute over where the federal government’s powers end and the provincial council’s begin.

The Third Infantry’s commander, Maj. Gen. Tony Cucolo, reached back to the early debates over the Constitution in the United States, saying in a videoconference at the Pentagon that there was “real Marbury v. Madison stuff going on here.”

By emphasizing the provincial council’s new powers and calling for respect for the rule of law, however, the Americans have in effect put themselves in direct opposition to Mr. Maliki’s government. Mr. Maliki, who once enjoyed unwavering support from the United States, has increasingly taken to accusing the Americans of interfering in Iraq’s internal affairs.

On Wednesday morning, Colonel Arnold called the new cordon by the Iraqi Army “a desperate act.”

“They’re losing,” he told Mr. Ejbarah, the council member. “That’s why they’re doing this.”

Steven Lee Myers reported from Tikrit and Baghdad, and Anthony Shadid from Baghdad. Sa’ad al-Izzi contributed reporting from Tikrit and Baghdad.

[Remington Raidr]

one of those huff-po fanatics says Palin was too stoopid to be Veep . . .

[incarcerated]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704431404575067720814328754.html?m od=googlenews_wsj

Biden's Diversion Strategy

Joe's 'gaffes' have a political logic.
OPINION
FEBRUARY 15, 2010, 6:56 P.M. ET
It's easy to pile on Joe Biden. Vice presidents, after all, acquire reputations in Washington they never really shake. Dick Cheney was Darth Vader, and now Joe Biden is the embarrassing uncle you try to keep away from the microphone.

Neither is entirely fair. Still, when Mr. Biden claims success for a victory won by a surge he and Barack Obama opposed, you wonder what he's up to. When this same genius is then dispatched to counter Mr. Cheney on the weekend talk shows, you wonder what the administration is up to.

Start with Mr. Biden's first whopper: telling CNN's Larry King last week that "one of the great achievements of this administration" may well be a democratic Iraq. "You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government. . . . I've been impressed how they have been deciding to use the political process rather than guns to settle their differences."

Now, many have jumped on Mr. Biden for claiming this as an Obama achievement. Perhaps more striking, however, is that the same Iraqi government that so impresses him today is something he once declared impossible.

That was back during a Democratic presidential debate in 2007, when Mr. Biden told ABC's George Stephanopoulos it was a "fundamental strategic mistake" to believe "there is any possibility in the lifetime of anyone here of having the Iraqis get together, have a unity government in Baghdad that pulls the country together. That will not happen, George."

Now it has not only happened, but it has happened, like all good things in our world, because of Barack Obama.

On substance, it's a line of argument that is hard to make. It's even harder when your attorney general and your national security adviser are out there admitting major policy goofs. And it's harder still when you send a Biden to do a Cheney's job.

That's what happened this weekend, when the White House deployed the sitting vice president to the talk-show circuit after learning that the former vice president would be appearing on ABC's "This Week." In many ways, it was a rerun of a clash back in May, when the White House hastily added a security-and-values speech in an effort to pre-empt a speech Mr. Cheney was delivering the same day.

My former colleagues in the Bush administration cannot understand why any White House would allow a former vice president to define the debate. One explanation is Mr. Cheney's low approval ratings, which may lead the president's advisers to conclude that they can use him as a foil. The danger is that such matchups by their nature diminish a White House while elevating the challenger.

In this case, the debate also plays to Mr. Cheney's strength.

Americans might not buy everything he says. But Mr. Cheney has a clear and consistent view about how to deal with men who want to kill us. Of late, events have helped make the Obama view a little less coherent.

Look at how Mr. Biden danced around the questions about a civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. On "Meet the Press" and "Face the Nation," Mr. Biden said the president would soon make a decision on what to do—never mind that in November Americans had been led to believe we had a decision when Attorney General Eric Holder announced that KSM and four other operatives would be "brought to New York to answer for their alleged crimes in a courthouse just blocks from where the twin towers once stood."

Plainly, Mr. Biden's interlocutors did not find his answers persuasive. They were, however, probably the best the vice president could do at a time when the administration is publicly walking back Mr. Holder's decision. In an interview in yesterday's New York Times, Mr. Holder set up the U-turn: "I think that I make the final call," he said, "but if the president is not happy with that final call, he has the ability to reverse it."

Ditto for Mr. Biden's efforts to reassure Americans about the handling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian caught trying to blow up a Northwest flight. Again, he was playing a weak hand.

The same day Mr. Biden's interviews appeared, National Security Adviser James Jones told "Fox News Sunday" the president had not been well served by the Abdulmutallab case, admitting that the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group should have been operational. He promised to "learn from our experiences."

So go ahead and chuckle over Mr. Biden's "gaffes," if you think he was on television to win an argument. But if you think his assignment was to use a Sunday-show duel to deflect attention from the Obama administration's two big backtrackings on terror, you might want to give Joe a little more credit.

[jbour13]

Let him talk. He's an empty suit that will implode before you know it. Then Obama can blame him for things that go wrong.

Classic bait and switch. Just wait. :munchin

[Thurman]

Even though it was passed 10/08, he is now patting himself on the back for saving our financial system from a new depression with the $700 billion bank bailout.

I can't decide what is more pathetic-- that they think American people are that stupid not to notice their obvious lies, or the fact that the MSM just lets all this slide?

[incarcerated]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704804204575069132514354588.html?m od=googlenews_wsj

Joe Biden's Iraq 'Achievement'

The vice president claims credit for the success of the surge he opposed
OPINION
FEBRUARY 17, 2010, 10:36 P.M. ET
By OMAR FADHIL AL-NIDAWI AND AUSTIN BAY
The defeatists have finally acknowledged that Iraq is well on its way to establishing a peaceful democracy. But that recognition comes with a catch: The public is asked to forget everything these strategically benighted cads said and did—or didn't do.

We are referring, of course, to Vice President Joe Biden's recent comments on CNN. "This could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You're going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government," he said in an interview with Larry King.

Less than three years after Sen. Harry Reid (D., Nev.) declared the war lost, less than three years after then-Sen. Barack Obama—with the usual fierce moral urgency—opposed the Bush administration's military surge, and within three years of Mr. Biden's own recommendation that Iraq be divided into three parts, these Democrats are laying claim to Iraq's extraordinary victory.

The vice president wisely made his victory assertion in the television studio of a left-leaning network experienced in fudging Iraqi history. CNN, by its own admission, muted coverage of Saddam Hussein for over a decade.

In the past, American liberals have relied on a sympatico press and leftist academics to obscure or whitewash their grievous historical errors. President George W. Bush, pursuing the global war on terror, encountered the same personal slander Ronald Reagan faced as he fought and won the last major political battles of the Cold War. Both were branded "cowboys" and "warmongers." Now, Reagan's victorious Cold War legacy is claimed by all Americans.

Honest historians will eventually discover signs of victory in Iraq during the worst moments of media-driven doubt. But some of us refused to be swept up in the faddish pessimism and reported what was actually happening on the ground.

In a piece from June 2005, one of us, Austin Bay, wrote that "the Baghdad of June 2005 is not the Baghdad I left in September 2004," going on to detail the country's progress. In March 2007, Omar Al-Nidawi and his brother Mohammad wrote in these pages about the stunning victory in Iraq: "the addition of more troops and the tough words of Prime Minister Maliki are doing the job."

The defeatists in the media damned any such success. When President Bush said the surge was working, his critics labeled him out of touch. They charged that front-line observations like those made by the Al-Nidawi brothers were paid propaganda. Three years later, these same individuals are weaving victory laurels for politicians who promoted defeat for their own short-term political advantage.

Mr. Biden, here are the facts. The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which former President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki signed, orchestrated the homecoming of U.S. troops. Mr. Obama didn't do it.

The Bush plan called for a phased transition from "more" coalition security operations to "fewer," based on the demonstrated improvement in the capabilities of Iraq's military and police forces. "Rheostat" warfare is the term Gen. David Petraeus used in 2007, after the device that varies the strength of electrical currents. Securing and extending the authority of Iraq's national government was an integral part of the process. Mr. Biden pushed his partition plan and relentlessly opposed the tough decisions and heroic efforts that created the conditions for SOFA.

Victory has a thousand fathers and Mr. Biden is but one of the many phonies. Historians may credit the Obama administration with a degree of reluctant follow-through on SOFA. But even this is a change from Mr. Obama's own 2008 cut-and-run campaign platform, which, if implemented, would have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Mr. Nidawi is an Iraqi commentator and political analyst. He blogs at iraqthemodel.blogspot.com. Mr. Bay served with the U.S. Army in Iraq in 2004. His latest book is "A Quick and Dirty Guide to War: 4th Edition" (Paladin Press, 2008).

[Utah Bob]

After studying Monsieur Biden for some time I have come to the conclusion that he is as crazy as a shit house rat.

[Ret10Echo]

After studying Monsieur Biden for some time I have come to the conclusion that he is as crazy as a shit house rat.

Well I saw this headline come out:

A mentally ill man with fake credentials managed to get within yards of Vice President Joe Biden

Then I thought of what "The Onion" might do with this...perhaps something along the lines of:


Secret Service initially reports a mentally ill man gets within yards of Vice President Joe Biden, but then realize it IS Vice President Joe Biden. ;)

Sorry...I couldn't resist. Bad, bad, bad....

[Gypsy]

Secret Service initially reports a mentally ill man gets within yards of Vice President Joe Biden, but then realize it IS Vice President Joe Biden.

Sorry...I couldn't resist. Bad, bad, bad....

Funny, funny, funny...! :D

[incarcerated]

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=170549

Biden says there is a 'moment of opportunity' for peace

By AP AND JPOST.COM STAFF
09/03/2010 10:45
US VP meets Peres, says "since our administration came to power Iran is more isolated"; stresses "absolutely no space between Israel and US" where Israel's security is concerned.
"The interests of both the Palestinians and the Israeli people, if everyone would just step back and take a deep breath, are actually very much more in line than they are in opposition," US Vice President Joe Biden said after a meeting with President Shimon Peres on Tuesday morning.

According to Biden, there is a "moment of opportunity" for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Biden is making the highest-level visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories by an Obama administration official.

Regarding Iran, Biden said, "Since our administration came to power, I would point out that Iran is more isolated - internally, externally - has fewer friends in the world."

Ahead of a meeting with Peres on Tuesday, Biden also said there is "absolutely no space between Israel and the United States" where Israel's security is concerned.

[incarcerated]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704784904575111451469264766.html?m od=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsForth

Biden Reasserts U.S.-Israeli Ties

MARCH 9, 2010, 9:57 A.M. ET
By JOSHUA MITNICK
JERUSALEM—At the start of a trip to the Middle East, Vice President Joe Biden sought to soothe Israeli fears of a nuclear Iran, assuring leaders in Jerusalem that the U.S.-Israeli alliance remains robust....

The vice president expressed hope that the indirect talks would eventually lead to direct negotiations that would resolve the final-status disputes over borders, Jerusalem, and refugees. Such an agreement will require "historically bold" compromises, he said.

"The U.S. will always stand with those who take risks for peace," Mr. Biden said, adding that he believes Mr. Netanyahu is ready to do that.

[incarcerated]

Ahead of a meeting with Peres on Tuesday, Biden also said there is "absolutely no space between Israel and the United States" where Israel's security is concerned.


Feel the love...
http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/Netanyahu-Urges-Calm-On-Settlement-Dispute-With-Washington-87614102.html

White House Advisor: Israel Undermining Mideast Peace

14 March 2010
Michael Bowman
Washington
The Obama administration continues to blast Israel's announcement it will build new housing in disputed East Jerusalem. VOA reports from Washington on the uncharacteristically blunt language that continues to flow between the United States and Israel.

Days have passed since Israel announced its intention to build 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem during a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, but the Obama administration's anger appears undiminished.

Senior White House advisor David Axelrod on NBC's Meet the Press television program.

"This was an affront, it was an insult," Axelord said. "But most importantly, it undermined this very fragile effort to bring peace to that region."

Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians view East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state under a "two-state" solution that has been the focus of on-again, off-again Middle East peace discussions promoted by the United States for years. Axelrod said Israel's construction announcement makes an elusive accord even harder to reach.

"We just now have started proximity talks - that is, shuttle diplomacy between the Palestinians and the Israelis," Axelord said. "And for this announcement to come at that time was very, very destructive."

Israeli officials have expressed regret for the timing of the announcement, but not for its substance. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to defend its policy of expanding Jewish settlements....

[Richard]

I suspect the original headline went more along the lines of:

Joe Biden Update: Obama one of Iraq's 'great schievements'

Richard's jaded $.02 :munchin