President Trump’s decision to take out terrorist mastermind Qassem Soleimani has had the predictable effect on Democrats. Where once they derided him for weakness and sought to impose the vision of Benghazi on the assault on our embassy in Baghdad, they now criticize Trump for his bad manners. They say that politics makes strange bedfellows, but this is insane.
Joe Biden joined the Democrats’ parade on behalf of Soleimani. He too would give the orders to take out a terrorist leader. Biden put it this way: “No matter how rightly reviled he was in the West, he was a senior figure in the Iranian government.” Students of ancient history may even recall that the Obama administration treated the Iranian regime as something of a friend to be raised up and empowered.
Biden nevertheless wanted no one to question his manliness. He too would give the order under the right circumstances. Indeed, he says, he counseled President Obama to do so in the case of Osama bin Laden. He had this exchange with Peter Doocy on Friday:
“As commander in chief, if you were ever handed a piece of intelligence that said you could stop an imminent attack on Americans — but you have to use an airstrike to take out a terrorist leader — would you pull the trigger?” Fox News asked Biden.
“Well we did – the guy’s name was Usama bin Laden,” Biden replied.
“Didn’t you tell President Obama not to go after bin Laden that day?” Fox News followed up.
“No, I didn’t,” Biden said.
Doocy observed that Biden is rewriting his own version of events (see the video below):
That’s not the story Biden told almost eight years ago during a retreat in Maryland for congressional Democrats, as he described a tense 2011 strategy session ahead of the raid.
“Mr. President, my suggestion is, don’t go — we have to do two more things to see if he’s there,” Biden had said in January 2012 of the strategy session.
Biden’s rewrite is not a recent development. This past June the Washington Examiner’s Jerry Dunleavy provided a detailed account of the Biden rewrite in “From ‘Don’t go’ to ‘Go’: Joe Biden has told opposite stories about his advice on Osama bin Laden raid.”
Given Biden’s lack of mental acuity, one might wonder whether Biden’s memory was playing tricks on him. Dunleavy’s article, however, suggests that Biden’s revision of history is a product of intention and forethought rather than accident.
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