The best thing about talking to Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden is that he offers a wealth of opinion, fact, and color. The worst thing about talking to Joe Biden is that the wealth of opinion, fact and color comes at you like a landslide. I covered him a little in 1987 during his first run when he was the golden boy of that campaign; he can be full of it and worth listening to. Now he's older, wiser and frankly angrier. Iraq and almost seven years of George W. Bush does that to people.
During an interview Wednesday in between Senate votes on matters such as the Iraq war and habeas corpus (which Republicans defeated), Biden talked about his partition proposal for Iraq, why few can tell the truth about Iraq (including his Democratic rivals; which puts Biden in the politically convenient role of truth-teller), and why Bush may be even more of a mad hatter than we suspected. Here a few gems I gleaned:
While not big on conspiracy theories, the Delaware Senator (who recently returned from his eighth trip to Iraq) told me he thinks he's got a few rationales for the insane Iraq adventure nailed down: yes, if not completely about oil, keeping a close watch (monitoring and influencing if you like) on one of the world's largest oil reserves certainly did figure into Neocon fantasies; they were deluded into believing that you could have a war and plant liberal democracy in the desert like a perennial; and that they want permanent bases in Iraq to project power in the region.
After last week's Iraq war dog and pony show with Gen. David Petraeus, Biden is convinced that Bush has essentially given up on Iraq and is running out the clock with no plan or strategy or clue until the next guy or gal can clean up the mess. When I asked Biden if this wasn't morally reprehensible, he paused. "It is reprehensible," he said. (For an enlightening yet depressing perspective on Bush and the historical glory he covets -- while blissfully trashing the present; you can do that when God is on your side -- see this dissection by Sidney Blumenthal in Salon.)
You can read more about my interview with Biden and his take on the Iraq quagmire -- and what he would have done as Secretary of State in a John Kerry administration -- in my Sunday Out on a Limb column.
In my daily link, Daily Show host Jon Stewart is taken to task by a blogger for sucking up to Republican presidential hopeful John McCain. Fake news may never get old but in this Alice in Wonderland political environment, it ain’t what it used to be.
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