Biden says he’s right on Iraq

According to Sen. Joe Biden, he has been right about a lot of things, and he believes Iraq will be next.

The Delaware Democrat and presidential candidate is staking his long-shot campaign on what he says is the only plan to take care of Iraq after the U.S. military leaves. He proposes dividing the country into three separate, largely autonomous regions.

"If you'll notice, everybody says there's no military solution, including the president," Biden said Saturday in an interview in Las Vegas. "Everybody says there's a need for a political solution, yet no one's offered a political solution except me."

Biden was in town Saturday evening to speak at an annual Nevada AFL-CIO awards dinner for "friends of Nevada's working families." He also mingled with locals in a separate cocktail reception before the event.

Biden said the other Democratic candidates, by not embracing a plan such as his, are basically on the same side as President Bush.

"The problem most of my colleagues have had is, they don't realize it and they don't mean it, but they really agree with Bush on the solution," he said.

"You have those who are saying leave and hope for the best, if you leave it puts pressure on the Iraqis to make a political accommodation so they can have a strong central democratic government. The president says put pressure on them with force. But they all agree on a false premise that I've been arguing against for four years. There's no possibility, in your lifetime or mine, there will be a strong central democratic government in Baghdad. Will not happen. Period."

Biden, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he believes the other Democratic candidates will come to embrace plans that resemble his.

"They're already starting to use a lot of my language, which is good," he said. "If you listen to what (New Mexico) Governor (Bill) Richardson is saying, he's essentially saying the same thing."

Biden said he wrote about the need for a multinational summit on Iraq three years ago, an idea that now has widespread support.

Biden said he also was right about Bosnia before everyone else. "I'm the guy that convinced -- well, he says I am. I started beating (President) Clinton up around about the head two years before he used force, to use force in Bosnia to end the genocide."

Of the eight Democrats running for president, Biden has raised the third-least amount of money, $4 million, more than Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel but less than everyone else.

But he said he believes he can win because "I really believe, no malarkey, that ideas matter. I don't think this election can be bought. I don't think having $100 million can win this election."

In addition to his confidence in his ideas, Biden is not shy about predicting the future. He says the politics of Iraq will come to a head this fall.

"Republicans in the Senate who continue to support the president's surge are quietly telling me and loudly telling the president that they're going to give him until the fall to see if this strategy works," Biden said. "I'll make a prediction to you that when it becomes pretty clear that it's not working in the fall, and you've got 21 Republicans up for re-election, they know there's no shot of them winning if they stick with this failed strategy. That's going to be the moment we have to hope that the president will feel the pressure from these guys ... to make a significant shift."

Biden said he hoped enough Republicans would defect from Bush to override a presidential veto of legislation similar to the supplemental appropriations bill currently pending, which includes language he authored to redeploy U.S. troops in Iraq.

Biden said he didn't agree with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's recent statement that the war in Iraq is "lost."

"I know what he means," he said. "His frustration is overwhelming at this president's mishandling the war, and unless the president changes course, Harry's going to turn out to be right."

Reid's comment has been "misunderstood" as a slap to U.S. troops, who "have done everything we've asked of them," Biden said.

The war, he said, "will be lost if the president doesn't change course. ... I think this president's plan is really not to make any fundamental change, but just to keep the lid from blowing off so he can hand it off to the next president."

Jerry Johnson, a 58-year-old Clark County employee, said he didn't come to Saturday night's reception expecting to be impressed with Biden.

"He's very confident and he's in it to win," Johnson said after hearing Biden speak. "I didn't think he had a chance. But with his confidence and his experience, now I think it's a possibility."

Johnson said he is undecided about whom he will support.