# Biden v. Palin Debate Oct 2. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 24, 2008, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965 "2008-09-24T12:02:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 15
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965/281 "2008-10-04T05:24:26Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Meanwhile, **Frank** , **leander** said he was dropping this tangent and you’re keeping it alive for whatever reason. If you and **Shayna** want to continue to snipe at each other about it, do it someplace else. There might be people who want to talk politics in here. Are you a GD mod? ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965/282 "2008-10-04T05:30:35Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > Are you a GD mod? [QUOTE=Winston Zeddemore] When someone asks you if you’re a GD mod, you say “YES”! [/QUOTE] .. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965/283 "2008-10-04T05:41:33Z")
\*\*Shayna, \*\*will you please stop junior modding? Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965/284 "2008-10-04T05:44:18Z")
Marley23, I commend you on plainly and flatly admitting you were wrong. I wish more people—especially some mods—were able to do the same. Well done. \*Just in case, this post is intended to be 100% snark free. ---
**Author:** ![leander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bcef8e/32.png) [@leander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leander)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965/285 "2008-10-04T07:14:00Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > He asked me to admit I was wrong, which I did without reservation by saying “I was wrong.” **The problem is that he appeard to be asking me to apologize for arguing with him and admit I was stupid to disagree, which isn’t happening.** If you and **leander** are unsatisfied with my “pissy concession,” I suggest you write to Santa and ask for a better one for Christmas, because you’re not getting it from me. (bolding mine) That’s not what I was saying and you know it. I’m happy to drop it because you’ve shown yourself to be not just a poor debater, but a dishonest one as well. But you need to stop misrepresenting what I said. ---
**Author:** ![Lantern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d26b3c/32.png) [@Lantern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965/286 "2008-10-04T12:37:06Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > One skill Biden certainly has is the ability to stare straight into the camera and lie his face off. And he might even say, “Let me repeat that…” and say the lie again. > > For example, he said that the U.S. spends more in a month in Iraq than it has in all seven years in Afghanistan. He turned to the camera and said, “Let me say that again.” and repeated it. It was a bald-faced lie. It’s not true. It’s not close to being true. It’s not even in the ballpark of the truth. As of [April 2008](http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf), the U.S. was spending about 9.8 billion dollars a month in Iraq, and 2.3 billion a month in Afghanistan. Rather than spending 7 years of Afghanistan’s cost per month, the U.S. is spending about four months of Afghanistan’s costs per month. He was off by more than an order of magnitude. > > But the really bizarre part was his little spiel about Lebanon. I mentioned how crazy it sounded to my wife as he said it, because I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about. So today I fact-checked it, and sure enough, the stuff he said was bizarrely stupid and wrong. This is what Biden said: > > This is a shockingly ignorant statement from a guy who’s supposed to be a foreign policy whiz. At first, I couldn’t even figure out what he was talking about because it was so far from the facts. Then I realized he was talking about the aftermath of Israel’s incursion into Lebanon. That’s the only thing he could have been talking about. But the U.S. wasn’t involved in that conflict. Nor was France. Nor was Hezbollah ‘kicked out’ of Lebanon, or anything close to it. France co-sponsored a UN resolution to end the fighting, which did the _opposite_ of kicking Hezbollah out of Lebanon. It allowed Hezbollah to regroup and end the war while still retaining the vast majority of its force. > > Furthermore, the NATO plan was opposed by just about everyone, and there’s no evidence that Biden or Obama ever supported it. And as for the consequences of not doing it - that supposedly Hezbollah became a legitimate part of the government as a result of Biden’s advice not being taken - the problem with that is, as I’m sure you all remember, Hezbollah won its place in the national government almost two years before that conflict, and before that had already been a major political player in the country at the local and regional level for decades. > > If Palin had mangled facts so badly, everyone would be talking about how ignorant she was. How in hell could Biden be that wrong about what happened just two years ago? Either he’s a moron, or he just says whatever the hell he feels like saying, or he was deliberately lying. On the first one you have your facts wrong. What Biden said was: > [@](#): > > Look, we have spent more money – we spend more money in three weeks on combat in Iraq than we spent on the entirety of the last seven years that we have been in Afghanistan building that country. Clearly he is not referring to all the money spent in Afghanistan but the money spent building the country which is a small fraction of the total money. On the second one, Biden clearly meant that the US and France had kicked Syria out of Lebanon. It’s the kind of misstatement that happens to anyone once in a while and the rest of the statement makes sense. The difference between Biden and Palin is vast; it’s not that Biden doesn’t make the odd gaffe now and then but that most of the time he speaks with knowledge and authority and has been doing so for years. The problem with Palin is that she hasn’t shown serious grasp of any major national issue and this shows very clearly in any setting where she is asked tough follow-up questions. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965/287 "2008-10-04T13:41:22Z")
> [@Lantern](#): > > On the first one you have your facts wrong. What Biden said was: > Clearly he is not referring to all the money spent in Afghanistan but the money spent building the country which is a small fraction of the total money. > > On the second one, Biden clearly meant that the US and France had kicked Syria out of Lebanon. It’s the kind of misstatement that happens to anyone once in a while and the rest of the statement makes sense. > > The difference between Biden and Palin is vast; it’s not that Biden doesn’t make the odd gaffe now and then but that most of the time he speaks with knowledge and authority and has been doing so for years. The problem with Palin is that she hasn’t shown serious grasp of any major national issue and this shows very clearly in any setting where she is asked tough follow-up questions. Thanks, **Lantern** for doing the heavy lifting. The bottom line is always “Don’t trust and verify.” ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965/288 "2008-10-04T18:19:11Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > **Shayna** , it’s not a personal problem. It was raised in this thread, and it is appropriate for this thread. Why don’t you take your junior modding to whatever forum it belongs? And the Cecil Award for irony goes to Frank! I would have thought it very obvious to anyone paying attention that the VP debate was going to get huge numbers. What’s funny is the people on Free Republic who seem to think that’s because Palin just has that many fans, you betcha. It could possibly be that people wanted to see the trainwreck or just didn’t feel like they knew her and wanted to get an idea of what she was about. Nooooo, it has to be that everyone who tuned in LURVES her. ---
**Author:** ![BarnOwl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e95f7d/32.png) [@BarnOwl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BarnOwl)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965/289 "2008-10-04T19:13:05Z")
She is the personification of beauty and brains. I am hopeleesly in love with Sarah Palin.:rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965/290 "2008-10-04T19:29:10Z")
> [@Lantern](#): > > On the first one you have your facts wrong. What Biden said was: > Clearly he is not referring to all the money spent in Afghanistan but the money spent building the country which is a small fraction of the total money. I see. Then he’s being deliberately misleading, because the whole conversation was about the total cost. He’s comparing the total cost of one to just the reconstruction budget of the other? Why not compare the reconstruction budget of Iraq to the reconstruction budget of Afghanistan? The impression he left with people is that the U.S. is doing almost nothing in Afghanistan because the overwhelming amount of money and soldiers is going to Iraq. In fact, the ratio is more like 4:1. His comparison, if we give it the charitable interpretation you’re giving it, makes no sense and is irrelevant unless you’re suggesting that if we wind down combat operations in Iraq that we’ll somehow mysteriously have more money for infrastructure in Afghanistan. Are we going to downsize the military? > [@](#): > > On the second one, Biden clearly meant that the US and France had kicked Syria out of Lebanon. It’s the kind of misstatement that happens to anyone once in a while and the rest of the statement makes sense. Oh, it does, does it? So… Bringing NATO troops into Lebanon would prevent _Syria_ from filling a power vacuum? Did France and the U.S. kick Syria out of Lebanon? How in hell would substituting Syria for Hezbollah justify his statement that had NATO troops been in Lebanon, Hezbollah wouldn’t be part of the legitimate government? For that matter, what did the NATO troops have to do with Syria at all? Given that the proposed NATO plan came long after Syria was no longer there, and in response to a conflict between Hezbollah and Israel? Just face it - he mangled his facts into incomprehensibility. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965/291 "2008-10-04T19:37:35Z")
And I want to come back to this. This is what Biden said about Afghanistan: > [@Joe Biden](#): > > Look, we have spent more money – we spend more money in three weeks on combat in Iraq than we spent on the entirety of the last seven years that we have been in Afghanistan building that country I’m not sure how you get from that that he was talking about infrastructure alone. He said “than we have spent on the entirety of the last seven years that we have been in Afghanistan rebuilding that country.” Your explanation is certainly charitable. But when someone says “more than the entirely of the last seven years that we’ve been rebuilding that country”, most people wouldn’t read that to mean just the reconstruction budget. They’d assume he’s talking about the U.S. presence there in, you know, its entirety. Especially given that the reconstruction is often done by U.S. soldiers and the Corps of Engineers under the military budget. In any event the [State Department](http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2006/60082.htm) says that the security and reconstruction budget for Afghanistan was at 10.3 billion as of 2006. This has to be the budget you think he’s talking about. I assume it’s somewhere closer to 13-14 billion now. Three weeks of combat operations in Iraq do not cost 12 billion dollars. So even if we accept your exceedingly charitable analysis of what he said, and if we grant that he wasn’t trying to use two radically different kinds of numbers together to score a very misleading point, he’s still off by at least a factor of two. And of course, Afghanistan is a multi-national operation, so the total budget for security and reconstruction is much higher than just the U.S.'s contribution. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965/292 "2008-10-04T19:53:36Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > One skill Biden certainly has is the ability to stare straight into the camera and lie his face off. And he might even say, “Let me repeat that…” and say the lie again. Yeah, he should put a punchy little line in there. Maybe “Thanks, but no thanks.” That’s always a sign of honesty. [Factcheck.org](http://Factcheck.org) shows [lots of fudging and outright lies](http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/factchecking_biden-palin_debate.html). They don’t mention Biden’s Afghanistan claims. ---
**Author:** ![Lantern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d26b3c/32.png) [@Lantern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965/293 "2008-10-04T20:26:54Z")
I would imagine the “security and reconstruction” budget covers a lot of the military costs in Afghanistan which Biden was not considering. My interpretation is he was focussing on things like building roads, schools and the like. His main point, quite valid, IMO is that this kind of infrastructure building in Afghanistan is much more important to US interests than the amount of money that is going into it. At worst he was a little careless in the way he phrased it. As for the second point I do believe that the US and France did play a leading role in pressuring Syria to leave Lebanon. The second reference to Hezbollah isn’t a mistake; Biden’s saying that if NATO had been deployed in Lebanon, that would have helped to curb the power of Hezbollah which seems a reasonable enough conjecture. This was a political debate not an international relations seminar and Biden had to make to simplify a complex situation to a few sentences. Within that context there is nothing terribly wrong about his statements apart from that one misstatement of Hezbollah for Syria. It hardly amounts to a lie let alone some kind of pattern of lying. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965/294 "2008-10-04T20:32:19Z")
Biden wasn’t talking about combat operations in Afghanistan, he was talking about reconstruction. here’s what he said: > [@](#): > > Look, we have spent more money – we spend more money in three weeks on combat in Iraq than we’ve spent on the entirety of the last seven years that we have been in Afghanistan building that country. Let me say it again. Three weeks in Iraq; seven years – seven years, or six and a half years, in Afghanistan. Narrowing his statement to men only reconstruction, he’s correct. > [@](#): > > Over seven years (not including FY 09), according to the Congressional Research Service, the United States has spent $11.8 billion on foreign aid and diplomatic operations in Afghanistan. The Pentagon in FY 08 has spent $145 billion in Iraq. This works out to about $8.4 billion per three week period. [http://www.npr.org/blogs/politics/2008/10/biden\_on\_the\_cost\_of\_war\_in\_ir.html](http://www.npr.org/blogs/politics/2008/10/biden_on_the_cost_of_war_in_ir.html) Biden was using a little slight of hand. He was comparing the cost of combat operations in Iraq to non-military spending in Afghanistan, but his statement was technically true. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965/295 "2008-10-04T22:08:29Z")
Perhaps the most over-the-top response was provided by [Rich Lowry’s _National Review_ commentary](http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDYzMGFiNjQ0MWRjNmI0ZTlkYjgwZTExMjA3MWNiZTk=): > [@](#): > > …I’m sure I’m not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, “Hey, I think she just winked at me.” And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America… As Keith Olberman put it when awarding him “Worst Person In The World”: “Look, sir, I don’t really care if you sat there last night during the debate and masturbated. But was it really necessary to tell America about it?” ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965/296 "2008-10-04T23:52:36Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Biden wasn’t talking about combat operations in Afghanistan, he was talking about reconstruction. here’s what he said: > > Narrowing his statement to men only reconstruction, he’s correct. > > [Biden On The Cost Of War In Iraq vs. Afghanistan : Vox Politics : NPR](http://www.npr.org/blogs/politics/2008/10/biden_on_the_cost_of_war_in_ir.html) > > Biden was using a little slight of hand. He was comparing the cost of combat operations in Iraq to non-military spending in Afghanistan, but his statement was technically true. The problem is that he was using these numbers as a way of proving that the U.S. military presence in Iraq was hampering the effort in Afghanistan. But using the reconstruction budget to make this comparison is nonsensical, because it has nothing whatsoever to do with the military presence in Iraq. He might as well have compared it to the cost of the last farm bill. The two are simply not related. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965/297 "2008-10-04T23:56:03Z")
> [@leander](#): > > That’s not what I was saying and you know it. No, actually, I don’t. That was the tone I got from every single one of your posts. And having grown up in a house where everybody always had to get the last word, I know that “I’ll drop this, BUT” never works (and is not intended to work). ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965/298 "2008-10-05T00:00:31Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > I would have thought it very obvious to anyone paying attention that the VP debate was going to get huge numbers. It should’ve been obvious, but it wasn’t to me. C’est la vie. I do think it’s funny that I saw so many stories about how the candidates didn’t deliver the expected screwups. I found myself thinking that if the press had paid attention to anything except Palin and Biden’s propensity for misspeaking, people wouldn’t have expected it so much in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![leander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bcef8e/32.png) [@leander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leander)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965/299 "2008-10-05T00:06:31Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > No, actually, I don’t. > [@Marley23](#): > > It should’ve been obvious, but it wasn’t to me. I think that tells us everything we need to know here. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965/300 "2008-10-05T00:31:27Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The problem is that he was using these numbers as a way of proving that the U.S. military presence in Iraq was hampering the effort in Afghanistan. Which it is, because every penny spent in Iraq is completely wasted…and with all due respect, it’s my money, not yours. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965.md?page=14) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biden-v-palin-debate-oct-2/464965.md?page=16)