There’s The Media Propaganda Of Obama As Leader; Then There’s The Actual Facts

It’s 3 AM.  The White House phone is ringing with news of a developing crisis.  But Obama is sound asleep after a busy day filled with first a round of golf and then laboring over his NCAA bracket picks (which turned out to be as gutless as he is).  And, of course, if you try to call back later, Obama will be long-gone on his Brazil vacation that even Brazilians clearly don’t want him to take.

Mind you, Hillary Clinton is a liberal, and therefore quite a a fool herself.  And she clearly hasn’t made every right step herself in dealing with the building disaster in the Middle East.  But she was clearly correct in her campaign assessment that Obama would be a weak and ineffective leader; and she’s clearly correct that Obama is an utter disgrace as a president now.

OH, HILL NO
Obama’s indecision on Libya has pushed Clinton over the edgeh
By Joshua Hersh Thursday, March 17, 2011
Fed up with a president “who can’t make his mind up” as Libyan rebels are on the brink of defeat, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is looking to the exits.

At the tail end of her mission to bolster the Libyan opposition, which has suffered days of losses to Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s forces, Clinton announced that she’s done with Obama after
2012 — even if he wins again.

“Obviously, she’s not happy with dealing with a president who can’t decide if today is Tuesday or Wednesday, who can’t make his mind up,” a Clinton insider told The Daily. “She’s exhausted, tired.”

He went on, “If you take a look at what’s on her plate as compared with what’s on the plates of previous Secretary of States — there’s more going on now at this particular moment, and it’s like playing sports with a bunch of amateurs. And she doesn’t have any power. She’s trying to do what she can to keep things from imploding.”

Clinton is said to be especially peeved with the president’s waffling over how to encourage the kinds of Arab uprisings that have recently toppled regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, and in particular his refusal to back a no-fly zone over Libya.

In the past week, former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton’s former top adviser Anne-Marie Slaughter lashed out at Obama for the same reason.

The tension has even spilled over into her dealings with European diplomats, with whom she met early this week.

When French president Nicolas Sarkozy urged her to press the White House to take more aggressive action in Libya, Clinton repeatedly replied only, “There are difficulties,” according to Foreign Policy magazine.

“Frankly we are just completely puzzled,” one of the diplomats told Foreign Policy magazine. “We are wondering if this is a priority for the United States.”

Or as the insider described Obama’s foreign policy shop: “It’s amateur night.”

Clinton revealed her desire to leave yesterday in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, responding four times to his questions about whether she would accept a post during a potential second Obama administration with a single word: “No.”

Philippe Reines, an adviser and spokesman for Clinton, downplayed the significance of the interview, saying, “He asked, she answered.  Really that simple. [It] wasn’t a declaration.”

But her blunt string of four “no’s” followed a period of intense frustration for the secretary, according to the insider, who told The Daily that Clinton has grown weary of fighting an uphill battle in the administration.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates came out against a no-fly zone almost two weeks ago, while Clinton grew closer to the Libyan opposition.

Last week, excommunicated members of Libya’s embassy to the United States set up shop in an office inside the State Department.

Obama himself made light of her strong feelings for supporting the opposition in a speech last week at the Gridiron Club Dinner, an annual gathering  that traditionally features a stand-up comedy act by the president.

“I’ve dispatched Hillary to the Middle East to talk about how these countries can transition to new leaders — though, I’ve got to be honest, she’s gotten a little passionate about the subject,” Obama said to laughter from the audience.

“These past few weeks it’s been tough falling asleep with Hillary out there on Pennsylvania Avenue shouting, throwing rocks at the window.”

And to some, the firing last week of State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley over disparaging remarks he made about the Pentagon detention policies had the appearance of a power move by the Defense Department more than anything else.

While the stakes in Libya could not be higher, the insider said that something far more domestic was on Clinton’s mind after she leaves the State Department: “She wants to be a grandmother more than anything.”

— With Anthony DeCeglie

I can’t believe I’m saying this: but I’m with Hillary Clinton.  And it is truly despicable that Obama would actually make light of a powder-keg about to explode in the heart of the Arab world.  Only a true fool would do that.  Even as that same fool further undermines and trivializes his own Secretary of State.

Mind you, this isn’t some “rightwinger” assessment, is it?  It’s Hillary Freaking Clinton, the Obama administration’s own Secretary of State.  The Republicans and Democrats, right and left both agree that the Obama presidency is an abject disaster who seems almost allergic to making essential decisions in a timely manner:

Senate Democrats were less pointed in their comments, but expressed similar concerns about the Obama administrations handling of the crisis. At one point, Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J. lamented all that the international community said but didnt do about the Qaddafi regimes military assault, and wondered aloud whether the presidents national security team was ever serious about trying to shape the outcome of the Libyan conflict.

I read the statements [from administration officials] and I almost get a sense it’s like a Texas two-step, Menendez said. I’m still not sure what we are supporting. It seems to me that it is a dangerous proposition to urge people to seek democracy and revolt and then basically not to help them. And so, you know, I am concerned as I listen to your answers, including what happens if Qaddafi prevailsI think we’re going to miss an opportunity to promote democracy with a small ‘d’ throughout the region, and to be seen on the side of those who have aspirations of that.

And it wasn’t just Hillary Clinton who warned us that Obama would be a failure.  His own Vice President also warned us that Obama simply wasn’t up to the job:

Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) Reaffirmed That Obama Was Not Ready To Be Commander In Chief. ABC‘s George Stephanopoulos: “You were asked is he ready. You said ‘I think he can be ready, but right now I don’t believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.’” Sen. Biden: “I think that I stand by the statement.” (ABC’s “This Week,” 8/19/07)

Sen. Biden: “Having talking points on foreign policy doesn’t get you there.” (“Biden Lashes Out At Obama,” ABC News’ “Political Radar” Blog, blogs.abcnews.com, 8/2/07)

Democrats are between a rock and a hard place in the sense that they can’t point out overly-loudly what a disaster Obama is, because the obvious result of their abandonment of Obama would be a conservative (and probably very conservative) president in 2012 to go with a Republican-controlled House and a Republican-controlled Senate.  Which means that while Obama goes from one “dangerous proposition” to another, they have to be bobbing-head dolls.

And Hillary – probably with Bill’s advice – is getting the hell out of Dodge before this total disaster and disgrace of a White House drags her down to hell with it.  Because this community agitator is very clearly is not up to this job, and we are one genuine crisis away from a total disaster.

Then there’s Obama’s schedule compared and contrasted to his poor underlings’.

For what it’s worth, it isn’t as though Libya is the first time Obama has failed in foreign policy.  Just off the top of my head, I can add articles I’ve written detailing Obama’s total failure in Egypt, in Iraq, in Afghanistan (not to mention all three combined), In Iran (and see here), in Russia and in North Korea.

I remember several years ago watching a fascination PBS program on presidential leadership.  The documentary’s poster-boy for pathetic presidential leadership was Jimmy Carter.  Obviously the man was intelligent, but the experts on leadership said “intelligence” does not a leader make.  Jimmy Carter was particularly faulted for not empowering his subordinates with enough power to do their jobs; he micromanaged and undermined through a tiny cadre of close advisors.  And as a result the nation drifted like a ship without a rudder.  That is clearly what is being described by Hillary Clinton now.

Obama clearly has an “inner circle” problem.  Even DEMOCRATS acknowledge it.

The PBS program did not make mention of the fact that Jimmy Carter was (and clearly still is) a fool with a totally bogus worldview.  A false worldview makes it impossible to act intelligently because, no matter how intelligent one is, one cannot possibly comprehend reality.  And I would submit that Both Carter and Obama have tragically and truly flawed views of the world.  Both of these men view the world through a set of theories that are simply totally false.  And from their poor foundations, all of their intelligence goes into the fruitless process of endlessly rationalizing and justifying their erroneous worldview.

One thing stands out in my mind as a symbol of disconnectedness: Obama flying off in the opposite direction of the planet for a routine (vacation) trip as he starts a war.  Via Sadhillnews:

Is it anything but a stupid thing to do to initiate a war and then do a photo shoot playing soccor?

If Obama doesn’t think this business is serious enough to bother to stick around, I don’t know why anybody else should.

Are You Ready For The Most Incompetent President EVER To Handle Armageddon Part I?

This is shaping up to get real scary.  We’ve got the biggest failure in US history wasting oxygen in our White House, and we might be seeing the most terrifying war in Middle Eastern history taking demonic form:

Accord­ing Kuwaiti news­pa­per Al-Dar: Diplo­matic sources in Cairo told the news­pa­per that the U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton told her Egypt­ian coun­ter­part Ahmed Aboul Gheit and the Saudi intel­li­gence chief Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz dur­ing a pri­vate meet­ing in the Nuclear Secu­rity sum­mit last week, that the Israeli-Iranian armed race is accel­er­ated towards a regional war in the Mid­dle East, dur­ing this year, at any time.

Clin­ton warned both Egypt­ian and Saudi offi­cials to take extra care and cau­tion, and define their strat­egy to for­mu­late the posi­tion of their coun­tries in the event of such a war.

Ear­lier this year, Joe Biden warned of a pos­si­ble Israeli attack this year, which involves Syria and Lebanon.

For the official record, Barry Hussein is a man who can’t even preside over his own dog’s potty training issues, let alone confront the nuclear threat posed by Iran.  Which is another way of saying that we are truly screwed.

During the campaign the same Hillary Clinton that advised Egypt that the fecal matter is about to hit the rotary oscillator very soon also said that Barack Obama was not even close to being ready to take that 3 AM phone call.  And nothing has changed.

The same president who’s utterly useless and asinine policy completely failed to even slow Iran’s nuclear program down is going to be an even more pathetic disgrace when Iran gets its nukes.

Joe Biden himself warned us that the US would face a massive foreign policy situation with Barack Obama as president.  He specifically warned that Obama wasn’t up to the job on the campaign trail:

Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) Reaffirmed That Obama Was Not Ready To Be Commander In Chief. ABC‘s George Stephanopoulos: “You were asked is he ready. You said ‘I think he can be ready, but right now I don’t believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.’” Sen. Biden: “I think that I stand by the statement.” (ABC’s “This Week,” 8/19/07)

Sen. Biden: “Having talking points on foreign policy doesn’t get you there.” (“Biden Lashes Out At Obama,” ABC News’ “Political Radar” Blog, blogs.abcnews.com, 8/2/07)

Well, we’re about to stare down Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his mad Mullahs who believe that they need to start hell to force the appearance of their Twelfth Imam.

And if you don’t already agree with the following –

– You will before it’s all said and done.

Iran, Iraq, and the Future in Bible Prophecy

The huge demonstrations protesting the election issues in Iran put that country on the front pages of every newspaper.

For nearly two weeks, demonstrations have raged.  Early on, some said that they didn’t know what would happen as to whether the protests would succeed in overthrowing the regime, but most recognized that the endgame was a foregone conclusion: the regime has the tanks, the guns, and the military.  It was only a question as to whether how far things might get before they used them.

As it stands, they won’t have to, as an AP article entitled “Intensified crackdown mutes protests in Iran” indicates.  While the demonstrations might well briefly flare up again (presidential candidate Mousavi has said he would appear at a demonstration on the 24th), there has never been any serious question that the theocratic regime would stand.

The serious question that remains is, stand as what?  Will it become a more open society, more willing to seriously interact with the Western world, or will it become more hostile and more determined to pursue a violent agenda in the coming months?

Based on the prophecies in the Bible, and based on my own belief that we are entering the last days, my view is that Iran will become more hostile and violent as it is increasingly isolated in the Western world.  Furthermore, my view is that it will engage in an increasingly close alliance/partnership with Russia and with other Islamic Arab and African states.

It is important to realize that the Iranian Constitution (Article Five) is inherently apocalyptic in nature.  The still-revered Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 proclaimed that the basis for Iran’s constitution and its government would be the authority of the Hidden (or Twelfth) Imam.  This apocalyptic figure has been called the ‘expected one,’ (al—Muntazar), the ‘promised one’ (al—Mahdi’), or the ‘hidden one,’ (al—Mustatir) in the Shi’a tradition.

The threats of impending destruction of Israel and even of war against the United States have been issued in the name of this Twelfth Imam who will (according to Iranian/Shi’a Islam) come in the last days.

According to the tradition, the Hidden Imam was taken into hiding by Allah and kept there until he reappears in the last days to purify the umma and take the world for Islam.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and many others in the Iranian leadership passionately hold to the coming of the Hidden Imam.  That in itself is not necessarily frightening: Shi’ite orthodoxy has it that humans are powerless to encourage the Twelfth Imam to return.  However, in Iran a group called the Hojjatieh believe that humans can stir up chaos and violence to encourage him – even force him – to return.  And Ahmadinejad is at least a former member, and quite likely a current member of this sect.  When Ahmadinejad became president, $17 million was spent on the Jamkaran mosque, which is central to the Hojjatieh movement.  And it is even more frightening when such a man sitting as President of Iran claims to have a direct link to God.

And Dr. Serge Trifkovic has said this regarding Ahmadinejad’s theology/eschatology:

Ahmadinejad, by contrast, shares with Trotsky an apocalyptic world outlook. He favors direct action in pursuit of a permanent Islamic revolution that will pave the way for the return of the Hidden Imam, pave it with blood, sweat and tears. Indeed he’d like to speed things up, as you point out, and implicitly he hopes to achieve this by twisting the arm of the Almighty – no less so than the cloners of red heifers and would-be re-builders of the Temple hope to do as a means of speeding up the Rupture. The fact that he is more sincere in his beliefs and more earnest in his endeavors than the kleptocrats of the House of Saud are in theirs, is alarming but unsurprising. He is a visionary; they are Machiavellian cynics.

A much-more detailed analysis that comes to much the same conclusion about Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic vision is available via FrontPage Magazine.

Mind you, re-building the Temple or cloning a red heifer are scarcely the source of inherently cataclysmic activities that many too many Shiite Muslims are pursuing.

So when one considers Iran, under such leadership, to be dedicated to the acquisition of nuclear weapons after stating that Israel should be “wiped out from the map” – and with the current Ayatollah Khamenei stating that Israel is a “cancerous tumor” on the verge of collapse – well, one should be very worried.  Wiping out Israel in a fiery blaze of atomic glory would indeed be a way to create the holocaust that would prompt the return of the long-awaited Hidden Imam (if anything ever could).

Clearly Jews understand this, as 1 in 4 would seriously consider leaving the country if Iran succeeds in acquiring nuclear weapons.  Given that such an event would literally mean the end of the state of Israel even if Iran didn’t nuke them, Israel has little choice but to attack Iran’s nuclear capability (since – clearly – no one else will).

Would Israelis hold back from a planned attack of Iran if they believed the United States would prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons?  Probably.  But the problem is, they clearly don’t believe that any more.  And they certainly no longer believe that America under Barack Hussein Obama is on their side.  When George Bush was president, fully 88% of Israeli Jews believed the president was “pro-Israel”; today under Obama, only 31% of Israeli Jews think so.

Such an event, of hated Israel swooping into an Islamic country to destroy their Russian-built nuclear facilities, would itself be a likely cataclysmic event.  Do you even dare to imagine how the Islamic world would react?  And realize that just such an event is very likely coming – and coming all-too soon.

Now Vice President Joe Biden predicted that Barack Obama would be “tested” by an “international crisis” that would test his mettle.  He went on to say:

I promise you, you all are gonna be sitting here a year from now going, ‘Oh my God, why are they there in the polls? Why is the polling so down? Why is this thing so tough?’ We’re gonna have to make some incredibly tough decisions in the first two years. So I’m asking you now, I’m asking you now, be prepared to stick with us. Remember the faith you had at this point because you’re going to have to reinforce us.”“There are gonna be a lot of you who want to go, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don’t know about that decision’,” Biden continued. “Because if you think the decision is sound when they’re made, which I believe you will when they’re made, they’re not likely to be as popular as they are sound. Because if they’re popular, they’re probably not sound.”

Joe Biden quickly turned his discussion of this international crisis and Barack Obama’s seeming poor handling of said crisis to politics and the hopes of Democrats.  But Iran obtaining nuclear weapons won’t be about politics; it will be about Armageddon.

Frighteningly, Barack Obama’s very own VP has said that Barack Obama is most certainly not ready for what may very well prove to be the most terrifying crisis in human history:

“There has been no harsher critic of Barack Obama’s lack of experience than Joe Biden,” McCain spokesman Ben Porritt said in a written statement, according to CNN. “Biden has denounced Barack Obama’s poor foreign policy judgment and has strongly argued in his own words what Americans are quickly realizing — that Barack Obama is not ready to be president.”

Biden frequently raised questions about Obama’s lack of foreign policy experience during the primaries. “I think he can be ready, but right now, I don’t believe he is,” Biden said during one debate. “The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.”

North Korea looms large, and may loom far larger in the days soon-to-come.  But a nuclear Iran is an even more terrifying prospect.  You’ll see.

As I turn to Iraq – and then to how Iraq relates to Iran in the context of Bible prophecy – allow me to first discuss Joel Rosenberg.

A Wikipedia article on Joel Rosenberg probably provides the most concise summary (accessed June 23, 2009):

Rosenberg’s novels have attracted those interested in Bible Prophecy, due to several of his fictional elements of his books that would occur after his writing of books. Nine months before the September 11th attacks, Rosenberg wrote a novel with a kamikaze plane attack on an American city. Five months before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he wrote a novel about war with Saddam Hussein, the death of Yasser Arafat eight months before it occurred, a story with Russia, Iran, and Libya forming a military alliance against Israel occurring the date of publishing,^[7] the rebuilding of the city of Babylon,^[12] Iran vowing to have Israel “wiped off the face of the map forever” five months before Iranian President Ahmadinejad said the same,^[13] and the discovery of huge amounts of oil and natural gas in Israel (which happened in January 2009).^[14] The U.S. News & World Report have referred to him as a “Modern Nostradamus,”^[15] although Rosenberg tries to play down those proclamations, stating that “I am not a clairvoyant, a psychic, or a ‘Modern Nostradamus,’ as some have suggested.”^[16] He gives the credit for his accurate predictions to studying Biblical prophecy and applying to the modern world.^[16]

Why did Rosenberg predict that there would be a “kamikaze plane attack on an American city” by Islamic terrorists?  Because he accurately understood the evil at the heart of Islam.

Why did Rosenberg predict a war between Saddam Hussein and the United States resulting in the overthrow of Saddam and his brutal regime?  That’s where it gets interesting.

Joel Rosenberg had done a thorough study of the Book of Ezekiel and of the Bible (as a couple of overlapping articles summarize – Article 1; – Article 2).  He learned that one day, according to the Bible, a massive army under the leadership of Russia and many of its former republics (Magog) and Iran (Persia) and consisting of many countries that are today Islamic [e.g. “Cush” (modern-day Sudan and Ethiopia); “Put” (modern-day Libya); “Gomer” (modern-day Turkey); “Beth-togarmah” (modern-day Armenia); and many peoples “along the mountains of Israel” (modern-day Lebanon and possibly Syria)] would form an “exceedingly great army” that would one day attack Israel.

What Rosenberg noted was the absence of two countries: Egypt and Babylon (i.e. Iraq).  Egypt had been a perennial enemy of Israel until 1973, when Egypt alone in all the Arab/Muslim world forged a historic peace treaty with the state of Israel.  That left Iraq.  Rosenberg asked himself, “How could a nation like Iraq, under the leadership of someone like Saddam Hussein, NOT participate in this mega-colossal-last-days attack on Israel?

Rosenberg concluded that Saddam Hussein WOULDN’T refrain from such an attack.  And that meant that Saddam Hussein would have to go.

And so, NINE MONTHS before the 9/11 attack, Rosenberg in his “fiction” created a scenario in which terrorists flew a plane in a kamikaze attack, and the United States took out the Iraqi regime and replaced it with a stable Western-friendly government.

And because the Bible is the true Word of an all-knowing God who knows the end from the beginning as revealed through His prophets, the scenario laid out by Joel Rosenberg turned out to be eerily true.  It wasn’t a “lucky guess”; it was based upon the God who had revealed the last days to an inspired prophet named Ezekiel some 2,600 years ago.

Thus we have Iraq, its tyrant who had filled mass graves with the bodies of at least 400,000 of his own people, overthrown and a stable democracy growing in his place.  And we have Iran, a country strongly allied with Russia; a country bent on acquiring nuclear weapons; a country that has announced its intent on the destruction of Israel; a country under the leadership of men who in all likelihood believe in establishing a future by an act of violent apocalypse.  Two countries on two very different paths.  And both paths known to God 2,600 years ago.

Obama-Biden: Obama Not Strong, Not Ready. Just Ask His V.P.

Obama wanted to seem all “hip” and “now” but his text message system obviously totally flopped. After all the promises and all the hype, the only text anyone ever got was a fake – a suitable metaphor for the whole Obama campaign.

Barack Obama did a stupid thing by not asking Hillary Clinton to run with him. He should have publicly asked her, and then hoped like heck she said no (maybe he was afraid of having to have someone taste his food for the next four years?). Obama foolishly said that Hillary Clinton “would be on anyone’s short list” – and then clearly never put her on his. She was never even vetted. That looks bad. Hillary Clinton supporters got nothing but another snub.

Tim Kaine was a lightweight, and Evan Bayh just had that name issue: Obama, Bayh (pronounced “Bye”). You don’t want your VP pick to be metaphorically waving “good bye” to your presidential nominee.

So it’s Senator Joe Biden (D-DE).

Supposedly Joe Biden will bolster the foreign policy cred of a kid who clearly isn’t ready for prime time.

But there are problems, oh so many problems.

Ben Porrit, McCain spokesman, was able to point out the biggest one. During the primaries as a candidate for president:

“Biden has denounced Barack Obama’s poor foreign policy judgment and has strongly argued in his own words what Americans are quickly realizing – that Barack Obama is not ready to be President.”

What we’re going to see is a whitewashing of that record. But let me just quickly demonstrate that the McCain camp is telling the truth.

But The Associated Press story is, “Analysis: Biden pick shows lack of confidence.”  So apparently at some level Obama agrees with Joe Biden and John McCain that he just isn’t really ready.

Beyond the fact that Biden is angry, he’s arrogant, he thinks he knows everything, he’s condescending, he’s aggressive and bullying, he says one stupid thing after another, and he absolutely positively will not shut his mouth, his foreign policy credentials actually serve to actually denounce Obama’s own puny record. That can’t be good.

Biden said Obama wasn’t ready to be President:

Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) Reaffirmed That Obama Was Not Ready To Be Commander In Chief. ABC‘s George Stephanopoulos: “You were asked is he ready. You said ‘I think he can be ready, but right now I don’t believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.'” Sen. Biden: “I think that I stand by the statement.” (ABC’s “This Week,” 8/19/07)

Sen. Biden: “Having talking points on foreign policy doesn’t get you there.” (“Biden Lashes Out At Obama,” ABC News’ “Political Radar” Blog, blogs.abcnews.com, 8/2/07)

At the same time Joe Biden acknowledged that John McCain was more than ready to be president, even saying of McCain that “I would be honored to be running with or against John Mccain, because I think the country would be better off.”

Biden voted to authorize the Iraq War Resolution. He voted for the Patriot Act in 2001. He voted to re-authorize the Patriot Act in 2006. But there’s another issue that looms even larger: troop funding, especially troop funding for armored vehicles. Barack Obama repeatedly voted against troop funding, marching in lockstep with the Democratic Party line in willingness to cut the troops off.

Our soldiers and Marines were dying due to IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) and needed armored transports.

WASHINGTON — Hundreds of U.S. Marines have been killed or injured by roadside bombs in Iraq because Marine Corps bureaucrats refused an urgent request in 2005 from battlefield commanders for blast-resistant vehicles, an internal military study concludes.

Biden demanded those vehicles, voting against the radical-left Democratic lock-step:

In [the Des Moines Register], the author explains that the Democratic leaders are not happy with the MRAP program. Even when it was not tied to Iraq War Funding, Senators Clinton and Obama voted against it. Dem. Senator Biden voted for it and has said the vote made him “the bastard at the family picnic.” Anti-war activists held “Impeach Biden” signs when he visited Iowa City. His staffers warned he would “get his skin ripped off” if he attended an event in Council Bluffs. All because of the vote. And he says he doesn’t care.“As long as there’s one American kid over there, I’m voting the money for these things,” Biden said in a chat the other day during a stop in Des Moines. “It’s the one way we can save lives before getting them out.”

Biden literally said it was a matter of life and death for the troops:

“I have never begun a discussion of an amendment,” Mr. Biden told his fellow senators, “by saying something as graphic and as drastic as ‘this is literally a matter of life and death.’ But it is. This is not hyperbole. This is not an exaggeration.” He was right on all counts.

Biden’s supporters said the refusal on the part of Biden’s rivals for president – which very much included Barack Obama – “would come back to haunt them”:

“Just as Beau Biden, a captain in the Delaware National Guard, had predicted in August at the Iowa Democratic Party Veteran’s Caucus Presidential Extravaganza in Des Moines, the vote on the emergency funding for the war in Iraq war has come back into play. Beau, the attorney general of Delaware, spoke on behalf of his father, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, and told the room full of veterans that his father’s Democratic rivals’ “no” vote on the funding, despite the attached Biden amendment to fast track funding and production for the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, would come back to haunt them.”

During the Democratic primary debates, Joe Biden accused Barack Obama of cutting off support that would save the lives of thousands of troops. Biden very articulately pointed out that, in effect, Obama had voted for our soldiers and Marines to continue to be killed by IEDs. Barack Obama voted against funding armored vehicles even when the whole focus of the bill was providing such armor (as opposed to some larger appropriation).

Interestingly, Joe Biden – who dropped out of the race early because the Democratic base wanted a candidate who would promise to cut and run from Iraq – somehow never really got around to endorsing Barack Obama.

If Joe Biden is the Vice Presidential selection because of his knowledge and experience, we might as well listen to what he said earlier, when he was looking at Obama critically, and take his words seriously.

Barack Obama isn’t ready. Even his own Vice President says so.