When an honest politician makes a mistake, he owns up to it. But after Joe Biden made a massive mistake by supporting the failed 2003 Iraq War that cost thousands of American lives and only further destabilized the Middle East, the 2020 candidate and his surrogates have instead chosen to deny that it ever happened completely.
This continued on Sunday during Face the Nation on CBS. Former Secretary of State John Kerry, who has endorsed Biden for 2020, was asked by host Margaret Brennan about 2020 rival Bernie Sanders’s criticism of Biden’s support for the Iraq War. The Sanders campaign had just blasted Biden, saying, “It is appalling that after 18 years Joe Biden still refuses to admit he was dead wrong on the Iraq War, the worst foreign policy blunder in modern American history.”
In response, Kerry denied that Biden ever supported it at all. He ignored the clear historical and factual record, instead falsely claiming that “Bernie regrettably is distorting Joe’s record.” This echoes what Biden himself has said, as he has shamelessly lied on the campaign trail and falsely claimed that he stopped supporting it right after it began.
NEW: @JohnKerry punches back at @BernieSanders criticism of @JoeBiden’s Iraq War vote:
“I think Bernie regrettably is distorting Joe’s record…” he says from the Biden campaign bus in Iowa. @CBSNews w/@margbrennan pic.twitter.com/xd0vs2uu5m
— Bo Erickson CBS (@BoKnowsNews) January 12, 2020
Now I’m the furthest thing from a Bernie Sanders supporter, but in this case, the Vermont senator is completely correct — and Biden’s spin is just flat-out untrue.
It’s a fact that Biden voted for the war in Iraq.
Here’s Joe Biden in 2002 saying he will vote for the authorization of military force against Iraq#JoeVotedForTheWar pic.twitter.com/VCZSLRsrA8
— jordan (@JordanUhl) January 12, 2020
It’s a fact that months after the invasion began, he said on the Senate floor (he does know there are cameras, right?) that “I voted to go into Iraq and I’d vote to do it again.”
The facts here are clear. The repeated attempt by Joe Biden and his surrogates to obfuscate them is deeply unethical, but it’s also revealing. They clearly know his foreign policy record can’t be defended on its merits.
