Meet the Press
Senator Biden appeared on Meet the Press on Sunday along with Senator John Warner from Virginia. They discussed Iraq:
MR. RUSSERT: Let me start the conversation with Senator Biden. By some comments you made at the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday — here it is: “I do think that many [Democrats] have reached a conclusion, as many of my Republican colleagues, that this is lost.”
Is that the view in the Senate, the war is lost?
SEN. BIDEN: Well, I think there’s a number of people that think it is. I do not think it is. I think we have a six-month window here to get it right. But I have to admit that I think its chances are not a lot better than 50:50, and it requires a real change in course along the lines that Senator Warner laid out in an amendment; got 79 votes in the United States Senate. I think if the president follows that prescription, we’ve got an even shot to make this a success.
MR. RUSSERT: You wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post where you said you did not think that the military, U.S. military, can sustain 150,000 troops in Iraq for the next two years. Why not?
SEN. BIDEN: I’m quite sure it can’t. You’ve had everyone from Barry McCaffrey on here; General Casey has spoken out publicly. There is — unless we fundamentally change the rotation dates and fundamentally change how many members of the National Guard we’re calling up, it’ll be virtually impossible to maintain 150,000 folks this year. So the question is not whether we’re going to draw down troops in the year 2006; it is, whether or not we’re going to draw down, what are we going to leave behind? Are we going to leave behind — are we going to have traded a dictator for chaos or are we going to have traded a dictator for a stable Iraq? That’s the real question. And that depends on the president’s actions from here out.
You can see the full transcript here.
