Joe Biden’s laugh-filled debate wasn’t so funny on national security
The veep told some tall ones about the Libya terror attack and about Iran’s nukes
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Saturday, October 13, 2012, 4:00 AM.
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KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS
Joe Biden blew a lot of hot air at the debate on Libya killings and Iran’s bomb.
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The heat generated by Joe Biden at Thursday night’s vice presidential debate cooled into object lessons in the danger of bombast by a top United States government official.
Biden’s smirking theatricality while facing Republican Paul Ryan included exasperated putdowns and, at times, broad factual assertions whose grounding in truth was tenuous.
So it goes in skewering an opponent’s record.
Have a merry, if you like.
But the vice president went beyond the bounds where there is license to play fast and loose.
He did a disservice by extending his bluster into real-time issues of security and international relations.
First, there was Libya.
What happened leading up to the assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, as well as the nature of the attack, are matters of compelling national interest.
Pressed by moderator Martha Raddatz that State Department personnel “wanted more security there,” Biden responded, “We weren’t told they wanted more security. We did not know they wanted more security there.”
The effect of the vice president’s flat, forceful denial was to convey to millions of viewers that the Obama administration at large had not been informed of rising fears on the ground in Libya.
Such an impression was false.
Only the day before, a U.S. security official told Congress that he had argued for additional protection for weeks. More, a State Department aide admitted she had turned down requests for stepping up safety with the intent of training Libyans to do the job.
Biden’s speed-talking lack of precision left the White House on Friday to explain that when Biden used the word “we,” he “was speaking directly for himself and the President.”
The episode added to the Obama administration’s markedly evolving accounts of the deadly Sept. 11 assault.
Those began with strong indications that the attack was a spontaneous response to the infamous video about the Prophet Muhammed.
Most notoriously, United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice drummed home the message on television news programs, while secondarily noting that investigations were under way.
Washington now believes Al Qaeda-linked terrorists killed Stevens in a planned, military-style raid. There weren’t even protesters outside the consulate.
It took days for administration officials to freshen its assessment, sparking charges that the White House had soft-pedaled on terrorism to blunt political blowback.
At the debate, Biden insisted that Rice delivered the initial account “because that’s exactly what we were told by the intelligence community. The intelligence community told us that.”
Even allowing for faulty intelligence, Rice’s words were ill-chosen for being premature under obviously cloudy circumstances.
Biden then compounded the felony by zapping and zinging without proper thought.
No issue on the presidential agenda demands more careful handling than Iran’s drive toward gaining nuclear weapons capability. This was not the approach taken by Biden in Thursday’s debate.
President Obama has broken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Netanyahu’s plea to set a “red line” beyond which Iran would face military action. Biden, though, cast Obama and Netanyahu as being in perfect harmony, including on the critical matter of how imminent the Iranian threat is.
How misleading Biden was becomes apparent when you compare his commanding assertions with Netanyahu’s views as expressed last month in a speech to the UN General Assembly.
Biden on how fast the clock is ticking on Iran’s enrichment of the uranium to be used in a bomb:
“The Israelis and the United States — our military and intelligence communities are absolutely the same exact place in terms of how close — how close the Iranians are to getting a nuclear weapon. They are a good way away.”
Netanyahu: “Iran’s completed the first stage. It took them many years, but they completed it and they’re 70% of the way there. Now they are well into the second stage. By next spring, at most by next summer at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage.
“From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks, before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.”
Biden on Iranian progress toward building a device that could detonate uranium:
“They have to take this highly enriched uranium, get it from 20% up. Then they have to be able to have something to put it in. There is no weapon that the Iranians have at this point. Both the Israelis and we know we’ll know if they start the process of building a weapon.”
Netanyahu: “Iran could produce the nuclear detonator — the fuse — in . . . maybe under a year, maybe only a few months.
“The detonator can be made in a small workshop the size of a classroom. It may be very difficult to find and target that workshop, especially in Iran. That’s a country that’s bigger than France, Germany, Italy and Britain combined.
“The same is true for the small facility in which they could assemble a warhead or a nuclear device that could be placed in a container ship. Chances are you won’t find that facility, either.”
Compare and contrast:
Netanyahu sees Iran compiling enough enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb by next spring and then building a detonator at a location that is impossible to find within a few months to a year.
Biden said the Iranians are “a good way away” from a bomb and that the U.S. and Israel will know if they start constructing a device.
He also declared of Israel: “There is no difference between our view and theirs.”
Wrong, and that’s not debatable.
Read more:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/biden-article-1.1182416#ixzz29El6NB5D
