HOUSTON — Bernie Sanders is betting Joe Biden’s support for the Iraq War is still the same type of political vulnerability that helped sink Hillary Clinton in 2008, her first presidential bid.
Sanders at the Thursday night debate was the only candidate to attack the former vice president on his vote, as a Delaware senator in 2002, for the congressional resolution in authorizing the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq.
On Thursday evening, the vice president was asked pointedly by moderator David Muir about whether he would support withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, even if it risked having a terrorist group such as ISIS fill the void.
In his response, Biden pivoted to his role in the run-up to the Iraq War, once again saying he opposed President George W. Bush’s leadership immediately after the invasion.
“With regard to Iraq, the fact of the matter is that, you know, I should have never voted to give Bush the authority to go in and do what he said he was going to do,” Biden said, adding that his vote was simply “to allow inspectors to go in to determine whether or not anything was being done with chemical weapons or nuclear weapons. And when that happened, he went ahead and went anyway without any of that proof.”
Following the invasion, Biden claimed that he publicly argued that “we should not have been engaged.”
Immediately following that answer, Sanders, who as a House member from Vermont in 2002 opposed the Iraq War resolution, was asked to comment.
“David, let me answer that, but let me just comment on something that the vice president said,” Sanders responded. “You talked about the big mistake in Iraq and the surge. The truth is, the big mistake, the huge mistake, and one of the big differences between you and me, I never believed what Cheney and Bush said about Iraq,” which brought roaring applause from the audience.
“You’re right,” Biden said.
That exchange was the last mention of Iraq during the debate, save for a brief answer from Andrew Yang about withdrawing our forces from the region.
Despite the silence from his rivals on stage, Biden has come under repeated media scrutiny for distorting his record on the invasion of Iraq.
Earlier this month, he implied during an interview with NPR that Bush misled him into supporting the Iraq War Senate bill and immediately opposed the invasion since “shock and awe.”
In reality, Biden supported the war for years after its start, saying as late as 2004 that the effort needed increased troop levels “to get things under control.”
Throughout the campaign, Sanders has hammered Biden over the war. In June, the Vermont senator said Biden was “wrong big time,” on the war when listing the “pretty significant,” policy differences between the two.
On Friday afternoon, Biden was asked by the Washington Examiner how he can explain his past statements with his current position now that he always opposed the invasion of Iraq.
“I can explain it pretty simply. Here are the facts, the fact of the matter is the reason for the vote was to get a vote from the [U.N.] Security Council,” he said, adding that he opposed the “way [the war] was being conducted at the time.”
During the 2008 Democratic primary, then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama repeatedly slammed then-Sen. Hillary Clinton’s initial support for the war, helping sink the White House hopes that year of the former first lady, future secretary of state, and 2016 Democratic nominee.
“I was opposed to Iraq from the start,” Obama said in January 2008. “And I say that not just to look backwards, but also to look forwards, because I think what the next president has to show is the kind of judgment that will ensure that we are using our military power wisely.”
