Pat Dollard

Tweet

UPDATE: Madeleine Albright agrees, see video. Remember … The Post I put up a couple days ago about BOTH campaigns being briefed by the Bush Administration about possible ‘terror attacks’ during our election cycle and transition to a new administration.

You gotta assume Biden was there … and then you gotta wonder about the man’s ability to keep his mouth shut about classified information, and even information that might incite panic into a nation’s people and her economy … I mean, this “gaffe” is one of THE MOST irresponsible things he has said to date in this campaign. This is highly dangerous for national security and the ability to monitor and track down efficiently terrorist movement(s) in order to snag them and haul them in … forget about just halting an attack … but the bigger picture of getting to roots of such plans.

Biden to Supporters: “Gird Your Loins”, For the Next President “It’s Like Cleaning Augean Stables”

October 20, 2008 - (ABC Political Radar)

ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe Reports: Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., on Sunday guaranteed that if elected, Sen. Barack Obama., D-Ill., will be tested by an international crisis within his first six months in power and he will need supporters to stand by him as he makes tough, and possibly unpopular, decisions.

“Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate,” Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. “And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you – not financially to help him – we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”

Not only will the next administration have to deal with foreign affairs issues, Biden warned, but also with the current economic crisis.

“Gird your loins,” Biden told the crowd. “We’re gonna win with your help, God willing, we’re gonna win, but this is not gonna be an easy ride. This president, the next president, is gonna be left with the most significant task. It’s like cleaning the Augean stables, man. This is more than just, this is more than – think about it, literally, think about it – this is more than just a capital crisis, this is more than just markets. This is a systemic problem we have with this economy.”

The Delaware lawmaker managed to rake in an estimated $1 million total from his two money hauls at the downtown Sheraton, the same hotel where four years ago Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., clinched the Democratic nomination. Despite warning about the difficulties the next administration will face, Biden said the Democratic ticket is equipped to meet the challenges head on.

“I’ve forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know, so I’m not being falsely humble with you. I think I can be value added, but this guy has it,” the Senate Foreign Relations chairman said of Obama. “This guy has it. But he’s gonna need your help. Because I promise you, you all are gonna be sitting here a year from now going, ‘Oh my God, why are they there in the polls? Why is the polling so down? Why is this thing so tough?’ We’re gonna have to make some incredibly tough decisions in the first two years. So I’m asking you now, I’m asking you now, be prepared to stick with us. Remember the faith you had at this point because you’re going to have to reinforce us.”

“There are gonna be a lot of you who want to go, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don’t know about that decision’,” Biden continued. “Because if you think the decision is sound when they’re made, which I believe you will when they’re made, they’re not likely to be as popular as they are sound. Because if they’re popular, they’re probably not sound.”

Biden emphasized that the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border is of particular concern, with Osama bin Laden “alive and well” and Pakistan “bristling with nuclear weapons.”

“You literally can see what these kids are up against, our kids in that region,” Biden said in recalling when his helicopter was forced down due to a snowstorm there. “The place is crawling with al Qaeda. And it’s real.”

“We do not have the military capacity, nor have we ever, quite frankly, in the last 20 years, to dictate outcomes,” he cautioned. “It’s so much more important than that. It’s so much more complicated than that. And Barack gets it.”

After speaking for just over a quarter of an hour, Biden noticed the media presence in the back of the small ballroom.

“I probably shouldn’t have said all this because it dawned on me that the press is here,” he joked.

“All kidding aside, these guys have left us in a God-awful place,” he then said of the Bush regime, promptly wrapping up his remarks. “We have the ability to straighten it out. It’s gonna take a little bit of time, so I ask you to stay with us. Stay with us.”

The McCain Campaign Response:

The worst of it: Biden assumes that Obama’s response to whatever crisis their administration provokes will not be perceived by the American people as the correct response. “It’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right,” he said.

It would be one thing if Barack Obama had, like John McCain, spent years pushing a foreign policy idea that was unpopular with the American people and dismissed by the media only to be extremely successful in the event–see the surge. But the opposite is true in the case of Barack Obama.

Barack Obama opposed the surge and said it would increase violence. That was wrong. When Russia invaded Georgia, Obama called on Georgia to ‘show restraint.’ That was wrong. Barack Obama has called for sitting down with the world’s worst tyrants without preconditions–it wasn’t apparent that was ‘right’ even to Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, but Obama has stuck with that policy. What kind of international crisis might those meetings provoke when it becomes apparent that he was wrong again?