It is difficult to over-estimate the critical role Biden played in making the tragedy of the Iraq war possible. More than two months prior to the 2002 war resolution even being introduced, in what was widely interpreted as the first sign that Congress would endorse a U.S. invasion of Iraq, Biden declared on August 4 that the United States was probably going to war. In his powerful position as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he orchestrated a propaganda show designed to sell the war to skeptical colleagues and the America public by ensuring that dissenting voices would not get a fair hearing.
As Scott Ritter, the former chief UN weapons inspector, noted at the time, "For Sen. Biden's Iraq hearings to be anything more than a political sham used to invoke a modern-day Gulf of Tonkin resolution-equivalent for Iraq, his committee will need to ask hard questions -- and demand hard facts -- concerning the real nature of the weapons threat posed by Iraq."
It soon became apparent that Biden had no intention of doing so. Biden refused to even allow Ritter himself -- who knew more about Iraq's WMD capabilities than anyone and would have testified that Iraq had achieved at least qualitative disarmament -- to testify. Ironically, on Meet the Press last year, Biden defended his false claims about Iraqi WMDs by insisting that "everyone in the world thought he had them. The weapons inspectors said he had them"
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THE WAR IN IRAQ
POLITICS AS USUAL
