"Aw jeez, not this $#it again!"
Posted on 08/23/2008 10:31:57 PM PDT by jessduntno
Biden revises claim he was ‘shot at’ in Iraq
By Susan Crabtree
Posted: 08/08/07 06:57 PM [ET] Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) — whose garrulous ways have led to a number of verbal gaffes over the years — has revised a dramatic comment that he was “shot at” in the Green Zone during a trip to Iraq.
Biden made the brief comment during the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate two weeks ago, as he was emphasizing how difficult it would be to redeploy U.S. citizens and troops out of Iraq if the U.S. decided to withdraw in six months.
“Let’s start telling the truth,” he said. “Number one, you take all the troops out — you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die, number one.”
When asked for a detailed account of the experience, Biden described three incidents on two separate Iraq trips in which he felt that he was shot at or might have been shot at. Only one of them took place inside the Green Zone, he said, and involved a “shot” landing outside the building where he and other senators were staying. He added that the vehicle he was traveling in the day before might also have been hit.
Biden said the incident happened in the morning while he and at least one other senator were shaving. Although he said it shook the building, he wasn’t rattled enough to duck and cover.
“No one got up and ran from the room—it wasn’t that kind of thing,” he said. “…It’s not like I had someone holding a gun to my head.”
Thinking about it now, he said, a more accurate comment would have been: “I was near where a shot landed.”
Biden aides have provided greater details of the three incidents in an e-mailed account: In December 2005, Biden and his staff spent the night in the Green Zone. At about 6:30 a.m., they heard mortars fired a few hundred yards away, which shook the aides’ trailer and rattled the building where Biden was getting ready for the day.
“A soldier came by to explain what happened and said if the mortar fire continued, they would need to proceed to a shelter,” according to the aides.
During the same December 2005 trip, a bullet narrowly missed the helicopter that Biden and his aides were flying in en route to the Baghdad airport from the Green Zone. But the most harrowing episode, according to an aide present, took place in December 2004, while Biden was leaving Iraq in a C-130 cargo airplane. The plane’s anti-missile system was triggered, indicating that they had been fired upon by a surface-to-air missile.
“When mortars are fired into the Green Zone or surface-to-air missiles are fired at a plane, they don’t have names or addresses on them,” Biden spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander wrote. “The nuance of being shot at or shot near means nothing in a war zone. The point Sen. Biden was making is that Iraq is a dangerous place — for our troops, for Iraqis, for everyone.”
Patrick Campbell, legislative director for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said Biden should be careful about how he describes his experiences, especially when making political points.
“Veterans don’t like it when people mischaracterize their service, people who overstate what happens to them,” he said. “We have names for them.”
Campbell also said the word “shot at” implies that “someone with an AK-47 pops up and is taking shots at you.” He thought Biden was more likely referring to mortars or rockets that insurgents periodically launch into the Green Zone but are more random in nature, as his aides later described.
For Stephen Hess, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University and a longtime political observer, Biden’s comment about being “shot at” simply reaffirms his reputation as loose-lipped and long-winded.
“There he goes again, as Ronald Reagan would say,” Hess remarked. “Unfortunately, it fits into his profile, and that’s exactly why he should be terribly careful about statements that may not quite parse out or deconstruct under scrutiny.”
Earlier this year, Biden stirred controversy by calling Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), an opponent in the race, “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and is a nice-looking guy.”
Yet even some would-be critics are giving Biden some benefit of the doubt.
Brookings Institution scholar Michael O’Hanlon, who co-authored a July 30 New York Times op-ed that argued in favor of continuing the Bush’s administration surge strategy, said Iraq is a dangerous place for civilians traveling there, even though that risk is nowhere near what soldiers on the ground face every day.
O’Hanlon said the typical U.S. soldier or Marine on patrols for a year has about a 1 percent chance of dying and a 10 percent chance of being seriously wounded.
Even though Biden is a long shot for the Democratic nomination, he is one of the leading Democratic voices on foreign policy. He was the first Democratic presidential candidate to suggest a detailed plan to split up Iraq along ethnic lines with a federal government only for common interests. Hess said these credentials make him a contender for vice president or a top-level cabinet post in any Democratic administration.
“He’s quite an honorable man and he has been [to Iraq] a lot more than many other senators and deserves credit for that,” Hess said. “All he had to do is rein in his rhetoric — get it right.”
"Aw jeez, not this $#it again!"
and so it begins...
Well, in that case, I've been to outer space, since I was "near" where the space shuttle landed. What a liar he is. Typical dem.
I think if we parse out and deconstruct this statement, this guy's calling Biden a liar. But why use three words when 30 will do?
the attack dog who tends to cut himself on his own knife.
“Isn’t this a Hillary moment?”
Close but not quite unfortunately. At least he had fire in the vicinity. This was an exaggeration. Clinton just flat lied.
Dishonesty fits into the “ends justif means” thinking of a corrupt leftist. “Could have been shot at” is just as significant as “was shot at” when you’re a great humanitarian...
bttt
Democrat ticket ... Bullsh*t Bill & Captain Chickensh*t ...
"Patrick Campbell, legislative director for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said Biden should be careful about how he describes his experiences, especially when making political points."
“Veterans don’t like it when people mischaracterize their service, people who overstate what happens to them,” he said.
“We have names for them.”
“No one got up and ran from the room—it wasn’t that kind of thing,” he said. “…It’s not like I had someone holding a gun to my head.”
Nor is it like he had a brain in his head...I wonder what good it would do to hold a gun there? Funny, though, no one can corroborate or no one else can remember these incidents. Especially odd, since it was obviously “seared into his memory.....”
He’s plagiarizing again..
That would have been Hillary and Chelsea. I understand that they cheated death by doing the serpentine move, then picked up two machine guns from blown-up Marine emplacements and charged the Taliban, killing 46 of them.
Sometimes, one’s own flatulence can be mistaken for a gun shot. Sometimes it can even be mistaken for machine gun fire. Knowing Biddy like we do, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
and betcha he ducked
What's the problem, LBJ got a Medal of Honor for less than that.
Shite’ de la bulle’
What should frighten folks, is that this fool Biden has been on the public payroll in IMPORTANT positions for too many decades!!!
Time to fire the incompetent, lying clown.
That’s some knife-carrying dawg, pardner!
As a first-year law student at Syracuse Law School, Biden had plagiarized a law review article in a class paper he wrote. Though the dean of the law school in 1988 as well as Biden’s former professor played down the incident of plagiarism, they did find that Biden drew “chunks of heavy legal prose directly from” the article in question. Biden said the act was inadvertent due to his not knowing the proper rules of citation, and Biden was permitted to retake the course after receiving a grade of F, which was subsequently dropped from his record.[27] Biden also released his undergraduate grades, which started off poorly andaccording to E. J. Dionne, remained unexceptional.[27] Further, when questioned by a New Hampshire resident about his law school, Biden misstated being in the “top half” of his class, (when he actually graduated 76th in a class of 85) that he had attended on a full scholarship, and had received three degrees when in fact he received two majors, History and Political Science, and a half scholarship from Syracuse and a grant from the Higher Education Scholarship Fund of the state of Delaware (he didn’t pay any tuition).[28] In response to the questions and criticism, he said: “However trivial, I certainly believe these are legitimate questions of press inquiry. And I will be as responsive to these and other inquiries as I possibly can.”[28]
Faced with these revelations, Biden withdrew from the nomination race on September 23, 1987, saying his candidacy had been overrun by “the exaggerated shadow” of his mistakes.[29] After Biden withdrew from the race it was learned that the Dukakis campaign had secretly made a video showcasing the Biden/Kinnock comparison and distributed it to news outlets; as a result, Dukakis fired John Sasso, his campaign manager and long-time Chief of Staff.[30][31]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden
I just heard Biden say “this will take more than soldiers, but a leader”. Is that complete and total disdain for the military? OK, Biden, Here is your rifle, go and protect us. Oh I forgot, all you got are WORDS. Great defense from Russian tanks.
Do the dems have a trademark on the word “nuance”? Just askin’.
Merci beau coup.
Poor Joe does have a vivid imagination; he imagines he made profound statements others actually said/wrote; he imagines he sees and hears bullets flying as he treads the ground where actual gun-toting heroes walk.
I can hardly wait to see what he blurts out next.
vaudine
So fast, in fact, that Ted Kennedy suffered rectal prolapse.
Wait... Shots land?
I know bombs land and rockets land... but shots land, too? Never heard anyone say it quite that way.
LBJ?..MOH?..Let’s check this out:...He never got the MOH, instead he got a Silver Star- he was an officer in the Naval Reserve and got the award for flying on a mission..Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:(under Lyndon B.Johnson) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_Johnson
“War record
After America entered the war in December 1941, Johnson, still in Congress, became a commissioned officer in the Navy Reserves, then asked Undersecretary of the Navy James Forrestal for a combat assignment.[12] Instead he was sent to inspect the shipyard facilities in Texas and on the West Coast. In the spring of 1942, President Roosevelt needed his own reports on what conditions were like in the Southwest Pacific. Roosevelt felt information that flowed up the military chain of command needed to be supplemented by a highly trusted political aide. From a suggestion by Forrestal, President Roosevelt assigned Johnson to a three-man survey team of the Southwest Pacific.
Johnson reported to General Douglas MacArthur in Australia. Johnson and two Army officers went to the 22nd Bomb Group base, which was assigned the high risk mission of bombing the Japanese airbase at Lae in New Guinea. A colonel took Johnson’s original seat on one bomber, and it was shot down with no survivors. Reports vary on what happened to the B-26 Marauder carrying Johnson. Some accounts say it was also attacked by Japanese fighters but survived, while others, including other members of the flight crew, claim it turned back due to generator trouble before reaching the objective and before encountering enemy aircraft and never came under fire, which is supported by official flight records.[13] Other airplanes that continued to the target did come under fire near the target at about the same time that Johnson’s plane was recorded as having landed back at the original airbase.[13] MacArthur awarded LBJ the Silver Star, the military’s third-highest medal, although it is notable that no other members of the flight crew were awarded medals, and it is unclear what Johnson could have done in his role purely as an “observer” to deserve the medal, even if his aircraft had seen combat.
Johnson’s biographer, Robert Caro, stated, “The most you can say about Lyndon Johnson and his Silver Star is that it is surely one of the most undeserved Silver Stars in history. Because if you accept everything that he said, he was still in action for no more than 13 minutes and only as an observer. Men who flew many missions, brave men, never got a Silver Star.”[13]”
In that case, any time he enters D.C. he is near a place where shots are fired.
Joe, you pos...don’t try to steal my tag line!!!
I’m insulted. Anyone who has legitimately been shot at should be too. From the military to the police to the firefighter/EMT. Getting shot at sucks, and to have this jackass trivialize it like it is no more than a stern look from a school teacher really shows his total lack of empathy. That stems from his total lack of honor.
Shot at, feeling hungry, feeling lonely, feeling tingling, feeling bored, it's all the same.
Poor Olden Joe simply misunderstood (a nuance) when one of his bathroom buddies offer him an “END COMBING”, and it wasn't meant for his scalp.
They are nothing more than posers living a lie and showing their true 'worth.'
Real 'worth' in the situations cited is if they shot back.
I have to ask because I heard the sprinklers come on. Where are you at?
Georgia. When you get old you wake up very early, probably just to make sure soon enough that you are still alive, ha ha.....
Not quite the big fish story but it is strange to refer to rocket fire as being “shot at”.
““Let’s start telling the truth,”
Yes abortion Joe, let’s start telling the truth.
Oh, for crying out freakin' loud.
When you are "shot at," there isn't any doubt. You KNOW you are being shot at. I've been shot at twice, and believe me, we all KNEW we were being shot at.
And nobody gets "shot at" in the Green Zone. Oh, you may have a mortar or a rocket come a little too close (not lately however...Yeeeehaaaa!), but the terrorists don't just come into the Green Zone and engage in a firefight.
Biden is full of khara.
That is absolutely true and the only reason they didn't get the MOH is they're too modest and so declined it. You did fail to mention that they did all this under imaginary sniper fire, which we all know is much more dangerous than the regular kind of sniper fire.
Biden’s too much. I worked in Iraq for 8 months starting late 2006 when things there were crazy. Had a few close calls, mainly from rockets and mortars. Shot at once in traffic in Baghdad by some drive-by idiot with a handgun who missed from 10 feet away — we were in a B6 armored car so we actually laughed after the goon had missed. Sounds like Biden was there when rockets were being lobbed into the Green Zone, which back in my day was happening all the time. Had one detonate outside my office one evening, it was a seriously spinchter-tightening event, but I’d never describe it as being “shot” at, because a rocket’s not a gun. The terrorist dirtbags, often hiding in residential neighborhoods among women and children, would just light off Katyushas, usually in 3s and 4s, sometimes by the dozen, trying to hit anything in the IZ. Ninety percent of the time, they didn’t hit a thing, though some folks did unfortunately get injured and a few got killed by them while I was there. It most definitely sucked and was terrifying at times, but we’d just forget about it after a barrage ended and get on with our jobs. It usually happened fast and was over fast. In the greater scheme of what we had to get done, it was no big deal.
As far as Biden’s claim about his plane being targeted goes, IMO that’s pretty unlikely. I used to chopper from BIAP into the Green Zone on my way back from Basra and during nearly early trip, the anti-missile flares on the chopper would trigger at some point during the flight. Could have been anything, I was told that a garage door opener will trigger them in some cases. Never once was it an actual missile targeting us. Ole Joe’s just trying to pump up his own volume, as is his style. Still, I give him credit for having the b*lls to visit Iraq as often as he did, which is far more than I can say about his prissy little running mate.
When compared to any veteran or even a mediocre student of military tactics, reports such as those of Biden and his ‘exposure’ to enemy fire are very revealing.
If one surmises he was exposed to sniper fire, then the fact he remains alive is a clear indication the sniper was not only poor, but an incredibly terrible shot, hence nobody of any consequence had decided to target him.
Secondly, if such an incompetent person was targeting him, then considering he was in a combat zone, he was even less competent for exposing himself tactically to such incompetent enemy tactics and risking such a high chess piece being taken by the enemy.
Post WWII, many vets held the position that the most honorable servicemen were those who didn’t tarnish the uniform with embellished decorations. The more senior the rank with less award, the higher the prestige of an honorable servant not seeking self aggrandizement.
Most vets and combat experienced vets, if exposed to enemy fires on their positions, generally don’t ‘brag’ about such experience, because it really reveals their foolishness for having exposed themselves to having become haphazard targets in an area obviously prone to such activity.
Victory isn’t promoted by needless exposure to enemy fire.
Biden’s report that he has visited the area 7 times also reveals much more about his incompetence than knowledge of the situation.
Any high ranking senior who has to distract his juniors from their assigned duties in order to glean an understanding of the situation, obviously lacks command and control, and worse, if repeatedly performed, manifests a callous disregard for the mission.
There are proper ways to report and to receive intelligence of the theater which are conducive of efficient military operations. Taking a Congressional tour of a battlefield, especially to find basis for criticising the Administration isn’t one of them. It does nothing to promote the interests of legitimate authority in theater and does nothing to promote national interests. It is only arrogant, accusatory, power mongering.
These 2 clowns are the least qualified to hold any public office.
I bet it was the same snipers that shot at Hillary..those guys sure get around.
Wonder if any of those videos are still around.
It was “seared into his memory”....
What is WITH these people and their need to confabulate????
He was just jealous of Hillary’s experience.
Just like with Obama, first comes the misspeaking, then the unspeaking. The difference is, with Biden, the unspeaking can take hours.
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