re: #226 Cannadian Club Akbar

re: #223 MandyManners

Biden is such an ass. He’s all over the news this morning taking swipes at Cheney.

Didn’t Biden take credit the other day for the success of the Surge?

He said the administration can take credit.

He didn’t actually say anything about taking credit for the Surge.

Here’s the transcript for the Larry King interview:
transcripts.cnn.com

He was asked to give his thoughts on Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan — on Iraq he said:

I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.

I spent — I’ve been there 17 times now. I go about every two months — three months. I know every one of the major players in all of the segments of that society. It’s impressed me. I’ve been impressed how they have been deciding to use the political process rather than guns to settle their differences.

The reason I bold the word “could” is that Biden is not directly assigning credit for anything but instead is setting up a conditional here. He appears to be saying if, as the troops are brought home, the Iraqi government remains stable and maintains some sort of representative democratic process, it would be a big success. If they can manage to pull that off it would be, though I imagine sectarian dysfunction in the government, and continued violence will prevent anyone from acting overly pleased with the outcome.