Sleepy Joe Biden supported that war
Biden did vastly more than just vote for the war. Yet his role in bringing about that war remains mostly unknown or misunderstood by the public. When the war was debated and then authorized by the US Congress in 2002, Democrats controlled the Senate and Biden was chair of the Senate committee on foreign relations. Biden himself had enormous influence as chair and argued strongly in favor of the 2002 resolution granting President Bush the authority to invade
Iraq.
“I do not believe this is a rush to war,” Biden
said a few days before the vote. “I believe it is a march to peace and security. I believe that failure to overwhelmingly support this resolution is likely to enhance the prospects that war will occur …”
But he had a power much greater than his own words. He was able to choose all 18 witnesses in the main Senate hearings on Iraq. And he mainly chose people who supported a pro-war position. They argued in favor of “
regime change as the stated US policy” and warned of “
a nuclear-armed Saddam sometime in this decade”. That Iraqis would “
welcome the United States as liberators” And that Iraq “permits known al-Qaida members to live and
move freely about in Iraq” and that “they are
being supported”.
The Iraq war has been a prominent, even decisive issue, in recent US presidential elections. That will make Biden’s history a liability
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