[rad-green] Biden Allegedly Told Bush He'd Get The Nobel Peace Prize If He Could Invade Iraq Quickly

*https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/joe-biden-george-bush-nobel-prize-iraq_n_5e1ddca5c5b650c621e60f4e
<https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/joe-biden-george-bush-nobel-prize-iraq_n_5e1ddca5c5b650c621e60f4e>Huffington
Post          01/14/2020Biden Allegedly Told Bush He'd Get The Nobel Peace
Prize If He Could Invade Iraq QuicklyBut the then-Democratic senator from
Delaware was skeptical it would be a short war, and he wanted the president
to level with the public.By Amanda Terkel, HuffPost US*

Seventeen years after the invasion of Iraq, the war remains a live wire for
many voters in the Democratic Party.

Joe Biden <https://www.huffpost.com/news/topic/joe-biden>, who was chairman
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time, voted for the war
<https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/107-2002/s237> ― along with 28
other Democratic senators and all but one Republican.

But Biden has been distancing himself from his vote, making it seem like he
was against the endeavor from the beginning.

Biden had to defend his record on the Iraq War right at the top of the
Democratic debate in Des Moines on Tuesday.

“I was asked to bring 156,000 troops home from that war. Which I did. I led
that effort,” Biden emphasized.

“It was a mistake to trust that they [President George W. Bush’s
administration] weren’t going to go to war. They said they were not going
to go to war,” he added. “They said they were just going to get inspectors
in. The world, in fact, voted to send inspectors in, and they still went to
war. From that point on, I was in the position of making the case that it
was a big, big mistake, and from that point on, I moved to bring those
troops home.”
[image: Then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), right, supported deposing Iraqi
leader Saddam Hussein in 2003 while George...]
MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGESThen-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), right, supported
deposing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 2003 while George W. Bush was
president.

Biden did not immediately start making the case that the war was a
mistake. In 2005, Biden did start calling his vote for the war a “mistake
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/12/us/politics/joe-biden-iraq-war.html>.”
But he continued to argue for staying in Iraq in 2004
<https://newrepublic.com/article/67650/fires-next-time>.

But over the past few months, Biden has repeatedly claimed that he was
against the war from the beginning.

Most recently, in Iowa this month, Biden told voters that as soon as Bush
“went ahead with ‘shock and awe,’ and right after that ― and from the very
moment he did that, right after that ― I opposed what he was doing
<https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/06/politics/fact-check-biden-iraq-war-repeat-iowa/index.html>,
and spoke to him.”

Similarly, in September, he told NPR that he supported Bush putting
inspectors in Iraq, not waging a war.

“I got a commitment from President Bush he was not going to go to war in
Iraq,” said Biden. “He looked me in the eye in the Oval Office; he said he
needed the vote (authorizing the war) to be able to get inspectors into
Iraq to determine whether or not (Iraqi dictator) Saddam Hussein was
engaged in dealing with a nuclear program. He got them in, and before we
know it, we had a shock and awe. Immediately, the moment it started, I came
out against the war
<https://www.npr.org/transcripts/756872790?storyId=756872790> at that
moment.”

Ari Fleischer was Bush’s press secretary at the time. In 2005, he wrote a
book, “Taking Heat
<https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Heat-President-Press-Years/dp/0060747625>,”
in which he talked about a Sept. 4, 2002, meeting at the White House where
the president asked congressional leaders for support for a resolution of
force against Iraq. He recounted an exchange between Bush and a “Democratic
senator”:

We want to work with the UN, Bush said, otherwise we will have to act
unilaterally.

The President also told the group he believed Iraq could eventually be a
democracy. One leading Democratic senator who later voted to authorize the
use of force against Iraq told the President, “I will be with you on
condition we level with the American people ― we’ll have to say [in Iraq]
awhile.”

“You’re right,” Bush said.

“If you can get it done without staying, we’ll give you the Nobel Peace
Prize,” the senator said. “I’ll support you for President,” he added.

“I don’t know whether that will help me or hurt me,” Bush said to the
room’s amusement.

The Democratic senator mentioned in the book is Biden. New York Times
journalist Peter Baker used this same anecdote for his 2014 book, “Days of
Fire, <https://www.amazon.com/Days-Fire-Cheney-White-House/dp/0385525192>”
and noted that he confirmed Biden’s identity with Fleischer.

Biden seemed skeptical a short commitment in Iraq was possible, so his
Nobel Prize comments were, in that respect, in jest.

But in the exchange Biden gives Bush his support for an invasion; he
certainly doesn’t come off as a senator who was against the use of force in
Iraq.

A Biden aide denied the account in Fleischer’s book to HuffPost and said
Baker never interviewed Biden either.

“Then-Senator Biden was not interviewed for this book, and we don’t
infrequently disagree with Ari Fleischer,” the aide said. “In fact, Biden
fought for legislation that would have forced Bush to first attempt to get
U.N. approval for any military action and in its absence certify to
Congress that there was no alternative course of action.”

But Fleischer stood by his account to HuffPost on Tuesday, going back and
checking his notes from the time ― and providing more detail from the
meeting.

Fleischer said that Biden told Bush he needed the “informed consent of the
American people” and that it was the “world’s problem, not ours.”

Biden further told Bush that he was impressed with him. “I think you’re
doing it the exact, right way. You have a little bit of time here. Check
off all the boxes.”

It’s not clear what Biden thought Bush was doing the “right way” ― it could
have simply been that Bush was trying to get congressional approval.

Tom Daschle, Dick Gephardt and Carl Levin, who were then top Democratic
lawmakers, were also in the meeting. According to Fleischer, they “raised
the most questions about Bush’s goals, mostly by asking what the plan would
be after Saddam leaves. Daschle asked what new evidence there was. Levin
[warned] that senior military leaders have concerns about an attack.
‘Saddam Hussein is a survivalist’ Levin warned Bush.”

He said Biden did not raise any other topics or ask more questions.

It’s not surprising that a Democratic presidential candidate would shy away
from a record supporting the Iraq invasion
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-iraq-invasion-isis_n_5d02d4e4e4b0dc17ef06d77a>.
It’s a deeply unpopular war and has doomed other candidates with primary
voters in the past. It’s been, in many ways, the defining litmus test for
the party in recent years. And in recent days, Sen. Bernie Sanders
<https://www.huffpost.com/news/topic/bernie-sanders> (I-Vt.), who is among
those challenging Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, has
been going after him for his war vote
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-goes-after-biden-false-claims-iraq-war_n_5e1402dce4b0b2520d26d3cb>
.

After his comments last September to NPR, Biden said he misspoke.

“I said I made a mistake trusting that he would not use force. ... The
extent to which I misspoke
<https://www.wmur.com/article/biden-acknowledges-he-misspoke-by-saying-he-publicly-opposed-iraq-war-from-the-moment-it-began/28970594>
was,
my public statements were that we were doing this all the wrong way,” Biden
said. “We should not have done it the way we did it, and we should be
supporting the troops if they’re in there, but we should be getting an
international coalition to support this, etc.”

“So, the misrepresentation was how quickly I said I was immediately against
the war. I was against the war internally and trying to put together
coalitions to try to change the way in which the war was conducted,” he
explained.

But four months later, Biden was again portraying himself as a war critic,
without any mention of his support for the invasion. And his campaign
defended his comments, telling CNN he was “referring to how he immediately
opposed the specific way
<https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/06/politics/fact-check-biden-iraq-war-repeat-iowa/index.html>
we
went to war ― without giving diplomacy and the weapons inspectors a chance
to succeed, based on hyped intelligence, without sufficient allies and
without a plan for the day after ― and the manner in which the war was
being carried out.”

In the run-up to the 2003 invasion, Biden tried to figure out a compromise
that would narrow the scope of the war
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/12/us/politics/joe-biden-iraq-war.html>
authority
that Bush wanted ― while still authorizing force. It was, in many ways, a
classic Biden role of trying to forge a deal between two sides. But Biden
also fought against alternatives
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/09/09/bidens-claim-that-he-opposed-iraq-war-moment-it-started/>
from
his more liberal colleagues that would have restricted Bush even further.

“I supported the resolution to go to war. I am not opposed to war
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/09/09/bidens-claim-that-he-opposed-iraq-war-moment-it-started/>
to
remove weapons of mass destruction from Iraq,” he said in a February 2003
speech. “I am not opposed to war to remove [Hussein] from those weapons if
it comes to that.”

Biden added that while he believed it “may well be true” that the war would
be “prosecuted quickly and successfully,” it would still “be a long haul” ―
and the president needed to tell the public the facts.

“The point is, we have every reason to have faith in our military,” he
said. “But while it is reasonable to expect the best, it would be
irresponsible not to prepare for the worst.”

In the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, then-Sen. Barack
Obama  <https://www.huffpost.com/news/topic/barack-obama>of Illinois ― who
eventually chose Biden to be his vice president ― was scathing in his
criticism of opponent Hillary Clinton
<https://www.huffpost.com/news/topic/hillary-clinton> and her attempt to
“rewrite history” concerning her Iraq war vote as a New York senator (Obama
wasn’t in the chamber when the vote occurred).

“She voted for a resolution called, and I quote, ‘a resolution to authorize
the use of United States armed forces against Iraq.’ Now she’s saying that
she wasn’t really voting for war,” he said. “She cast her vote after
failing to read the national intelligence estimates on Iraq ― a report that
raised enough doubts that the majority of Democratic senators who read it
voted against the war.”

“We need accountability in our leaders,” Obama added. “You can’t undo a
vote for war just because a war stops being popular.”

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