Political Skullduggery

Gosh Joe, do ya think?

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday that he believes top officials in the Bush administration have privately concluded they have lost Iraq and are simply trying to postpone disaster so the next president will "be the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof," in a chaotic withdrawal reminiscent of Vietnam. ...

Biden gave the comments in an interview as he outlined an ambitious agenda for the committee, including holding four weeks of hearings focused on every aspect of U.S. policy in Iraq. The hearings will call top political, economic and intelligence experts; foreign diplomats; and former and current senior U.S. officials to examine the situation in Iraq and possible plans for dealing with it.

It's not too difficult to see that Biden is playing his cards in a way to try to preserve any viability he thinks he may have [laughable if you think about it] to run for president in 2008.

Whereas cutting off funds is a "hollow threat," Biden said in an interview this week, a congressional resolution could have a powerful effect if it drew support from the significant number of Republican senators who are increasingly alienated from Bush's policies. Biden, who expects to offer his proposal at a meeting of Democratic senators today, argued that an anti-surge resolution might not bind the president but would exert considerable pressure on him to reconsider his approach.

More intriguing, Biden is studying whether Congress might reconsider the original Iraq war resolution, now as out of date as the administration's prewar claims. The resolution includes references to a "significant chemical and biological weapons capability" that Iraq didn't have and repeated condemnations of "the current Iraqi regime," i.e., the Saddam Hussein regime that fell long ago. In effect, the resolution authorizes a war on an enemy who no longer exists and for purposes that are no longer relevant.