Double Whammy: Biden Gets Called Out for Iraq War Lie, Faces Fresh Questions About His Handsy Nature

Double Whammy: Biden Gets Called Out for Iraq War Lie, Faces Fresh Questions About His Handsy Nature

Apparently Joe Biden hasn’t caught on to the fact that the mainstream media and fact checkers aren’t giving him as many free passes as they used to for the gaffes he makes and the lies he tells on the campaign trial.

Just last week, the Washington Post lowered the boom on the Democratic presidential frontrunner for a war story he’s often told in which he has “jumbled elements of at least three actual events into one story of bravery, compassion and regret that never happened.”

Biden employed the ‘fake but accurate’ defense in response to the Post’s report, saying “the essence of the story” was true. He also expanded on his answer in an interview he did days later with NPR stating,”The details are irrelevant in terms of decision-making.”

But during the same interview, Biden told another whopper, and NPR dug into the pesky little details of his false claim about his position on the Iraq war:

“I think my [foreign policy] record has been good,” Biden told NPR. He explained that his rationale in authorizing the use of military force in Iraq in 2002 was based on a commitment he had received from then-President George W. Bush that he would not go to war in Iraq.

“[Bush] looked me in the eye in the Oval Office. He said he needed the vote to be able to get inspectors into Iraq to determine whether or not Saddam Hussein was engaged in dealing with a nuclear program,” said Biden. “He got them in and before you know it, we had ‘shock and awe.’ ”

[…]

“Immediately, that moment it started, I came out against the war at that moment,” Biden told NPR.

Except that’s not how it happened at all:

But in multiple public remarks made after the invasion began in 2003, Biden openly supported the effort. Biden publicly said his vote was a mistake as early as 2005, but not immediately when the war began in 2003.

“Nine months ago, I voted with my colleagues to give the president of the United States of America the authority to use force, and I would vote that way again today,” Biden said in a speech at the Brookings Institution on July 31, 2003. “It was a right vote then, and it’ll be a correct vote today.”

Listen to Biden’s remarks below as well as NPR’s subsequent fact check:

Slate used NPR’s fact check as a springboard for their own more in-depth fact check:

• Biden voted to pass the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution on Oct. 11, 2002.* Though Biden now tells NPR that this was an intermediate step and that he had not expected it to lead directly to war, the possibility of invading Iraq to instigate “regime change” was explicitly under discussion at the time. In fact, the first article I found in a Nexis search for newspaper articles that included the words “regime change” in the months before the vote was an Aug. 1, 2002, New York Times piece that begins with the words, “In the first public hearings on the administration’s goal of ousting Saddam Hussein from the Iraqi presidency, an array of experts warned a Senate committee today that an invasion of Iraq would carry significant risks.” The chairman of that Senate committee was Joe Biden.

Read their full takedown of Biden here.

President Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod slammed Biden’s attempt at revisionist history, saying that in doing so the former veep was “in danger of creating a more damaging meme”:

It’s one thing to have a well-earned rep for goofy, harmless gaffes. It’s another if you serially distort your own record. @JoeBiden is in danger of creating a more damaging meme.https://t.co/ThCVCz4Fjb

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) September 6, 2019

For what it’s worth, Axelrod has not been shy about criticizing his former boss’s second in command. Just last month, he blasted reports of the idea being floated by Biden allies that his campaign events be scaled back in order to lessen the likelihood of more gaffes:

And it’s not only bad advice, it’s advice that should be given in private and not through the media!

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) August 15, 2019

In addition to NPR and Slate exposing his lie about his position on the Iraq war, fresh questions are being raised about his hands-on approach when it comes to female supporters:

Joe Biden left an Iowa teacher unimpressed with his canned response to her question about collective bargaining, but what she resented more was how he abruptly seized her hands and clung onto them.

Jessica Roman, 41, had stopped Biden, 76, as he greeted voters on Monday during the Hawkeye Area Labor Council’s Labor Day picnic in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The North Liberty preschool teacher, who works with special needs children, was pressing the former vice president on his plans to help unionized members of her profession under recent changes to Iowa’s collective bargaining laws when he reached for her hands.

“I think that he means well but, you know, he grabbed my hands right away and that was really uncomfortable,” she told the Washington Examiner. “He was very close and, in my mind, I’m like, this is part of our problem: Not recognizing that you need to ask first, or can I shake your hand? Not just grab your hands and hang onto them. That bothers me.”

Watch videos from two different angles of the alleged hand clinging:

Watch Joe Biden uncomfortably grasp this woman's hands.

She later told reporters: "he grabbed my hands right away and that was really uncomfortable…He was very close and, in my mind, I'm like, this is part of our problem: Not recognizing that you need to ask first" pic.twitter.com/3NfhkskMPk

— Tommy Pigott (@TCPigott) September 6, 2019

Here’s another angle:

That incident is actually pretty tame in comparison to other documented instances of him getting overly handsy with women. That said, you’d think he’d have learned his lesson by now that he should just not touch women at all unless the woman is his wife or another family member.

But just like with the tall tales he tells about his record, he’s not going to stop putting his hands on women and invading their personal space. Because even though journalists and liberal commentators alike have called him out on these issues in varying degrees since he officially declared his campaign in April, his poll numbers haven’t take much of a hit and remain strong.

In some respects he’s like the Teflon candidate among the Democrats running for president. For how much longer, though, is anyone’s guess.

— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —

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