Washington Post reporter Dan Zak wrote an unintentionally hilarious review of the vice presidential debate in which he said ???a pro debated a novice Thursday night on national television.??? Angry Joe Biden was supposedly the pro, the one who could ???sit at the desk in the Oval Office and have his feet touch the ground.???
During the debate, an unhinged Zak was reduced to describing vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan as the ???perp of the week??? on Law and Order. The editors at the Post reportedly told him to tone it down a bit when he wrote for the paper.
Meanwhile, other reporters were making Biden do a perp walk over some of his more??? creative outbursts during the debate. Biden???s already been caught lying about Benghazi, his own votes for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ObamaCare???s contraception mandates (no less than the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called him out on that one) and the definition of a ???millionaire??? under Obama???s plans to jack up tax rates on everyone making over $200,000. What an old ???pro??? Joe Biden is!
Now it falls to another Washington Post reporter, Marc Thiessen, to call blarney on Biden???s rhetoric on Syria. Actually, Thiessen doesn???t call it blarney ??? he calls it ???the Syria coverup.???
Biden claimed that the Administration has done a bang-up job of identifying precisely the right elements of the Syrian resistance to arm, but a Monday report in the New York Times countered that ???most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats.???
An American official is quoted as saying ???the opposition groups that are receiving the most of the lethal aid are exactly the ones we don???t want to have it.??? This leads Thiessen of the Post to a gloomy assessment of that lovable old pro Biden and his boss:
In other words, what Biden said was false. Worse yet, Biden knew his statement was untrue when he said it. According to the Times, ???President Obama and other senior officials are aware [of this conclusion] from classified assessments of the Syrian conflict that has now claimed more than 25,000 lives,??? adding the intelligence assessments ???casts into doubt whether the White House???s strategy of minimal and indirect intervention in the Syrian conflict is accomplishing its intended purpose of helping a democratic-minded opposition topple an oppressive government, or is instead sowing the seeds of future insurgencies hostile to the United States.???
If this is the assessment of our intelligence community, why did Biden say the exact opposite in the debate last week? When Biden was asked during the debate why requests for additional security in Libya were denied, he pleaded ignorance and blamed the State Department, declaring: ???We weren???t told they wanted more security there.??? But in the case of Syria, the Times reports, the President and his national security team were told that the aid was going to ???hard-line Islamic jihadists.??? Yet Biden plainly asserted aid was going to ???people who deserve the help??? and ???free forces inside Syria??? and not jihadists. It is simply implausible that, if President Obama and his top national security advisers were aware of the intelligence assessments, Biden was not.
Biden certainly does seem to have a complex view of U.S. intelligence. On the one hand, Biden has absolute confidence in their ability to precisely monitor the Iranian nuclear program. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (or ???Bibi,??? as Biden made an annoying habit of calling him at every opportunity during the debate) carefully explained to the U.N. general assembly that Iran can complete the final stage of weapons assembly in a chamber the size of a school classroom. Biden is ready to gamble countless lives on the CIA???s flawless ability to locate and monitor that room.
On the other hand, Biden thinks the intelligence services are a pack of bumbling fools who made the White House look bad by peddling a tale of ???spontaneous video protests??? in Benghazi, conjured entirely from thin air??? and they sold it so well that poor old Joe and the rest of the White House professionals never even bothered to double-check it with the State Department. Heck, United Nations ambassador Susan Rice didn???t check it with State, and she works there.
Apparently Biden doesn???t put much stock in the intelligence community???s assessment of Syria, either. In reality, it???s the American people who shouldn???t have faith in Joe Biden or his running mate.
