VP Biden Apologizes for Telling Truth About Turkey, Saudi and ISIS
Vice President Joe Biden is apologizing again for speaking the truth. After talking for an hour and a half at Harvards John F. Kennedy Forum last Thursday, he took a question from a student who asked a wise question: In retrospect do you believe the United States should have acted earlier in Syria, and if not, why is now the right moment?"
Biden, predictably, said the answer is no for two reasons. The first being the unreliability, incompetence and radicalism of the forces the United States would have been supporting on the ground. No real surprise there. But then he said what everyone in the region knows and The Daily Beast has reported extensively:
My constant cry was that our biggest problem is our allies our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria, Biden told his listeners in remarks subsequently posted on the White House YouTube channel (go to 1:32:00 if you want to skip the earlier speech).
The Turks were great friends, he notes, adding that he recently spent considerable time with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and they have a great relationship. Ditto the Saudis and the Emiratis. But when it came to Syria and the effort to bring down President Bashar Assad there, those allies policies wound up helping to arm and build allies of al Qaeda and eventually the terrorist Islamic State.
What were they doing? Biden asked rhetorically. They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad except that the people who were being supplied were al Nusra and al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/05/vp-biden-apologizes-for-telling-truth-about-turkey-saudi-and-isis.html
Purveyor
(29,876 posts)speaking the truth...
left-of-center2012
(34,195 posts)But actions like this make him come across as befuddled and week. Clinton will use it against him should he run in 2016.