Joe Biden defends policy record amid Trump’s Iran threats

Bloomberg

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden defended his foreign policy record as he campaigns on the argument that he’s best suited to
be commander-in-chief amid President Donald Trump’s escalating threats against Iran.
“It’s not to suggest I haven’t made mistakes in my career but I would put my record against anyone in public life in terms of foreign policy,” Biden said at a rally in Des Moines, when a voter asked him how he could be trusted given his past positions.
The voter cited Biden’s 2002 vote to authorise the use of military force in Iraq and how he reportedly discouraged President Barack Obama from
moving ahead with a raid on the Afghan compound where Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding.
The former vice president polls far ahead his Democratic opponents on foreign policy but some of his rivals — especially Bernie Sanders — have questioned his history, particularly the Iraq war vote, as evidence of holes in his national security record.
Biden acknowledged that his advice to Obama while in the White House Situation Room with other senior officials was, “I would vote for you to do another pass to determine whether he’s there,” but said he was more bullish once he was alone with the president.
“As we walked out of the room — it’s not public knowledge — I went up to the Oval Office, said, ‘Mr. President, follow your instincts, go,’” Biden said. “But if I said that to the president in front of everyone else and he didn’t go, then in fact it would have been in the news.” Biden also offered a rare defense of his Iraq war vote, suggesting he’d been misled by President George W Bush.
“He looked me in the eye in the Oval Office and promised me all he was doing was wanting to get the authority to be able to send in inspectors” to determine whether Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons, Biden said.
Biden’s explanations came after he called on Trump to further justify his threats against Iran.