Download Download

Senator Joe Biden joined Keith Olbermann on Tuesday's Countdown to talk about his foreign policy speech today, in which he knocks away John McCain's ever-changing rationales for staying in Iraq and his embrace of the failed Iraq policies of George Bush. Biden notes the ongoing Democratic primary battle between Obama and Clinton, but makes it very clear that Democrats are more than willing to engage him on in a debate about Iraq and national security.

Biden, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, tells Keith that regardless of how Senator McCain meant his 100 years in Iraq statement, the American people are against it and it sends the wrong message to the people of the Middle East. Americans don't want permanent bases in Iraq and as Biden puts it, it feeds into the theory that we're only there to control their oil:

"...The larger point was, when we say to the Arab world that would stay in Iraq for 100 years even in peaceful circumstances, it feeds the assumption that we're there to control their oil and to have a permanent military base. That's what I meant when I say it feeds the conspiracy theory, the urban legend in the Arab street, that the only reason we were in Iraq in the first place and staying in Iraq is because we want to control their oil and have a permanent base in the region."