What do we really know about Joe Biden?

The conventional wisdom says that Senator Joe Biden (D, Delaware) brings to the Obama ticket experience, especially in foreign policy. But his credentials in this area may not be exactly what the MSM and Democrats believe is the truth.

BY choosing Sen. Joseph Biden as his vice-presidential running mate, Barack Obama sent three messages. The first two are implicit admissions that Hillary Clinton had a point in the primaries. The third tells us more of what Obama means by "change."

Biden is supposed to make up for Obama's lack of the knowledge and experience needed to leader on national security and international affairs. And the Delaware senator, with his humble working-class origins, is also meant to reassure the "simple folk" that Obama seems to be losing.

But the third message is that "change" means a return not to the Camelot of President John Kennedy, but to the foreign policies of Jimmy Carter. For Biden, an early supporter of Carter in his quest for the presidency in 1976, shares the former president's view of the world and the United States' place in it.

In 2004, I was astonished to hear Biden doing his own bit of America-bashing in front of an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The US, he claimed, had no moral authority to preach democracy in the Middle East. "We don' have much of a democracy ourselves, " he said mockingly. "Remember our own presidential election; remember Florida!"

Not much of a democracy. Yet he has been elected for 6 terms in the Senate. Did he stuff the ballot box? Did he buy each vote? No he convinced the citizens of his State to vote for him over his rival. That Senator is democracy in action.

Biden has the experience of more than three decades in the US senate, at least two of them dealing with foreign affairs and defense. But experience is no guarantee of good judgment. And Biden has been wrong on almost every key issue.

* In 1979, he shared Carter's starry-eyed belief that the fall of the shah in Iran and the advent of the ayatollahs represented progress for human rights. Throughout the hostage crisis, as US diplomats were daily paraded blindfolded in front of television cameras and threatened with execution, he opposed strong action against the terrorist mullahs and preached dialogue.

Iran is the bastion of Human Rights in the world, Senator. They have shown us how to properly treat women (hajib, hanging rape victims, stoning), gays and lesbians (hang them) and love for your neighbors. Such a beacon of hope for the oppressed!

* Throughout the 1980s. Biden opposed President Ronald Reagan's proactive policy against the Soviet Union. Biden was all for détente - which, in practice, meant Western subsidies that would have enabled the moribund USSR to cling to life and continue doing mischief.

The Soviet Union collapsed due to the efforts of Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald For, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. Notice how we left your dear friend and mentor Jimmy Carter out of it. He too was a Moonbat on the Soviet Union.

* In 1990, Biden found it difficult to support President George Bush's decision to use force to kick Saddam Hussein's army of occupation out of Kuwait.

* A decade-plus later, the senator did vote for the liberation of Iraq from Saddamite tyranny. But as soon as terrorists started challenging the new democratic system in Iraq, he switched sides and became a critic of the whole war effort. He claimed that the Iraq war was lost and suggested that the US partition the newly liberated country into three or more mini-states.

Joe Biden has flip-flopped on this too. He voted for the War Powers Act to invade Iraq. When he started his failed run for the White House last year, he changed his mind. Funny how that happens these days.

And instead of one nation, Iraq. Joe Biden has been screaming for it to be divided into 3 nations. So instead of one insurgency, we would have to deal with 3 insurgencies.

* For more than a decade, Biden has adopted an ambivalent attitude towards the Islamic Republic in Tehran, now emerging as the chief challenger to US interests in the Middle East. Biden's links with pro-Tehran lobbies in the US and his support for "unconditional dialogue" with the mullahs echo Obama's own wrong-headed promise to circumvent the current multilateral efforts by seeking direct US-Iran talks, excluding the Europeans as well as Russia and China.

Had Biden had his way, "the Evil Empire" would still be around and Saddam Hussein still in power. The US would still be begging the mullahs of Tehran for forgiveness of unspecified "past sins" - and more American hostages would be seized in the Middle East while the mullahs celebrate their first atomic bombs.

If the mullahs say there isn't any nuclear weapons, then Joe Biden takes them on their word. Forget checking for yourself, just accept their word.

Joe Biden is the perfect VP choice for Barack Hussein Obama. They both want to bring us back to the past. The failed policies of Jimmy Carter. And their election would be a disaster for us all.