Except, of course, that that’s not what he said. He didn’t say any of the stuff you say he did. He said that his NATO plan wasn’t adopted, and the direct result is that Hezbollah is now part of the legitimate government. Except that Hezbollah became part of the legitimate government almost two years previous to the Israeli engagement. So the point is nonsensical. In addition, I have not been able to find anything which indicates that Biden or Obama supported the NATO plan. And in any event, the plan was largely considered to be a joke. None of the principal players supported it.
Let’s face it - he created a paragraph of foreign policy word salad, mixing together a bunch of unrelated things, getting the names wrong and confusing the dates. He made claims that are flatly untrue.
Oh, that’s rich. Because it’s a debate, you’re allowed to make claims that fly in the face of facts. This from the side that went ballistic at Palin’s lack of knowledge because she asked for a clarification of the Bush doctrine.
Moderator’s Note: From here on out, everybody in this thread will be talking about the Vice Presidential debate–about what Biden said or didn’t say, about what Palin said or didn’t say, about whether the Senator or the Governor is a big fat liar, and about whether or not the debate will allow Obama to take Ohio or McCain to win in Florida, and similar issues–all right? Thanks.
See, this is exactly what I mean by dishonest debating. I said I would be happy to drop it, but I am not going to sit back and let you misrepresent what I said. Now you can keep coming back with stupid quips like the one above, but I think it’s clear that you’re just trying to spinning things to make yourself look good.
Funnily enough, I keep expecting you to run and hide like you did before. :eek:
Well, of course they’re related, Sam. Money coming out of the same budget’s always related.
The fact is that the Iraq war HAS resulted in a lack of resources for Afghanistan. It could hardly be otherwise. Yes, Biden used a sleight-of-word trick to make it sound more dramatic than it is, but it was not a lie and the central idea - that fighting an unnecessary war in Iraq has resulted in a lack of focus on a necessary war in Afghanistan - is very true and very relevant.
No, it really isn’t, other than in the case where military capability wasn’t available because it was all used up in Iraq. And the reconstruction money doesn’t come out of the same budget. Or rather it comes out of the same budget as education funding, bridges to nowhere, farm subsidies, and the myriad other things the U.S. government spends money on. Blaming the lack of reconstruction funding in Afghanistan on the Iraq war is about as relevant as blaming the lack of funding for reconstruction in Afghanistan on the prescription drug bill.
Biden is clearly trying to say that you can’t have both. It’s either Iraq or Afghanistan. The example he used was highly misleading. He left the impression that he was talking about military support, and used a huge disparity in resources to make his point. Instead, it turns out that he was comparing combat operations in Iraq with funds for building schools in Afghanistan. The two are simply not related. It would be just as fair for McCain to say that if Obama is elected we’ll lose in Afghanistan because the money we needed for reconstruction is instead going to go into Obama’s health care plan.
And the Lebanon stuff is still nuts. There’s simply no substitution of words you can make that can put that particularly humpty-dumpty of a chain of reasoning back together again. It’s nonsensical from start to finish.
I’m not saying Palin was any better. She was worse. I already said that Biden won the debate on points. I have no illusions about Palin’s depth of knowledge of foreign affairs.
However, we were talking about Joe Biden. I know that invoking the other side’s failings is always a last-ditch attempt to deflect an issue in a debate, when all other modes of attack have failed.
Since the topic of the thread is the VP debate, it seems that “invoking the other side’s failings” is exactly what the whole freaking conversation is about.
I believe that Hezbollah left the governnment in 2006 and launched an agitation which was resolved in 2008 with Hezbollah rejoining the government on substantially better terms. That is probably what Biden was referring to and he was claiming that had a NATO force been in there the Lebanese army would have been strenghthened and Hezbollah weakened and may not have been able to rejoin the government on its terms. This is a counter-factual but a perfectly reasonable one.
The plan was quite serious and was being pushed by Rice at the time:
She didn’t ask for a clarification. She fished for a clue as to what the hell it was. Then she took a wild guess that it was Bush’s “worldview.” She had never heard the words “Bush Doctrine” before in her life. Please don’t talk to us like we’re a fucking Dennis Prager audience here. We’re not dummies.
I think talking about a foolish war that is wasting money and lives is pretty damned relevant when we start asking where our money is going and what we’re getting for it (i.e. nothing).
FYI: I’ve tried to but couldn’t find the original post speculating what a broadcast of the debates would be like if they had instant fact-checking projected onto the screen as they went along.
CNN will be doing just that with the Vice-Presidential debate today at 4:00 CDT.
All of which can quite fairly be pointed to as wastes of money that detract from the U.S. government’s abilility to accomplish things it actually has to. The Iraq War is a better point of argument, though, for two reasons:
It’s a more easily comparable concept, and
It DOES pull away military resources and attention, not just money. Ethanol, a total waste of money, can’t be transferred to Afghanistan; a soldier can. Prescription drug plans won’t kill Osama bin Laden, but more military resources might.
And that’s a perfectly valid argument, Sam, at least in general. Maybe you disagree, and fair enough, but the facts on the ground are that the war in Afghanistan has gone very poorly, and I believe that’s largely due to the Iraq War, which (a) drew off resources directly, and (b) justifiably hurt America’s standing in world opinion and likely reduced other nations’ willingness to help the effort in Afghanistan.
I agree Biden’s choice of number to compare were misleading, but they were not factually incorrect, and the general concept in one I agree with. There was a spin there, but no lie.
Oh, that’s true, no doubt. It was a bizarre statement. I couldn’t figure out what the hell he was talking about.
