Slow Joe Biden strikes again

HT to Robinson and Long


Senator Biden, your office just called and asked you to please stop sticking your foot in your mouth. From Jonah Goldberg at NRO's The Corner:


Biden today:

"What I care about is: What in God's name is she going to do — along with John McCain — about the thousands of people who don't have health care?" Biden asked. He'll ask her about "The superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan where my helicopter was forced down...John McCain wants to know where Bin Ladin and the gates of Hell are? I can tell him where. That's where Al Quaida is. That's where Bin Ladin is. It's not in the country of Iraq."

Forced down on the superhighway of terror! Holy testosterone Batman, that sounds scary!

Um, actually it made an unscheduled landing, maybe because of snow.

Update: From a reader:

The interesting thing about that Biden statement is that he's out of date. He's still ranting on about the US not going to the Pakistan/Afghanistan border, but the fact of the matter is that our raids there have been stepped up quite a bit of late. See this story-


From the e-mailer's linked story:


American military forces are stepping up cross-border ground attacks into Pakistan from Afghanistan on the eve of the seventh anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001.

In the last two weeks, the military has begun launching ground assaults in the Pakistani border provinces known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, American intelligence and military officials said. The region is believed by American and Pakistani intelligence to be hosting the leadership of Al Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden.

While American special forces and military contractors have conducted raids in Pakistan, such actions were rare and required Cabinet-level approval. In July, the leadership of Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was given the sole authority to approve ground assaults in Pakistan. Late last month, the American military began launching ground attacks in the country on a near daily basis, depending on local conditions and intelligence, according to a military official who requested anonymity.

The escalation in Pakistan is due in part to the incoming leader of Central Command, General David Petraeus, who has been credited with changing the course of the Iraq war and is said to have the full trust of President Bush. Before formally taking the reins at Central Command, General Petraeus began meeting in June with Pakistani political leaders to develop an effective strategy for combating Al Qaeda in the border provinces.

Most important for the Bush administration, however, has been the political implosion in Islamabad since the resignation of America's longtime ally, President Musharraf.

"With Musharraf gone, the policy of self-deterrence is now gone," a former senior counterterrorism official for both the Clinton and Bush national security councils, Roger Cressey, said. "We would deter ourselves from doing anything for fear that any action would destabilize Musharraf."


Jonah Goldberg calls Biden's comments a "mini Tuzla." Yeah, it fits, and it does so because, just like Hillary's Tuzla dash, he's making up stories to score political points. And those stories aren't corroborated by the facts that Jonah links to. The chopper made an unscheduled landing due to inclement weather. It wasn't because it came under fire, or that it was hit by ground fire. It was snow, Joe.


And the Democrats think they can win with these two rubes? Please. Howard Dean, please pick up the white courtesy phone. Your party is paging you. They'd like to know why you guys went along with a rookie and a guy that suffers from foot-in-mouth disease. They'd like to know why you didn't run with Hillary given the way the early polls showed she would have been a much stronger opponent against John McCain.


Publius II