Maybe we can get his name legally changed to "Joe Facepalm."

[Adam]

Biden’s Gavel Gaffe in Poland

Vice President Joe Biden wandered a little off course on a trip down memory lane today.

“Fifteen years ago, I was honored, as the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, to lead the fight for Poland’s admission into NATO,” Biden said in Warsaw during a visit designed to reassure America’s Eastern European allies in the wake of Russia’s move to take control of Crimea.

The only problem: Biden wasn’t chairman back then.

It was Sen. Jesse Helms, a North Carolina Republican, who guided the committee and launched the floor debate on granting NATO accession to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Biden did lead minority Democrats in approving the treaty resolution, after having initially expressed doubts about the political viability of expanding NATO.

“If we are really going to alienate the Russians,” Biden asked in January 1997, according to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, “what are we going to get for it?”

WTH is wrong with this guy? A pathological liar Vice President and a pathological liar President. Unreal.

[Norm dePlume]

Okay, so he did push for Poland's admission to NATO, but he did so as co-chair of the Senate NATO observer group, and he wasn't chairman of the Foreign Policy Commission until two years later. It's a slip-up, but not exactly bizarro world opposite reality.

What is interesting to note is that different senators used the hearings
for different purposes. Some used them to shape their own opinion.
Others used them to convince others of their opinion. Senator Biden
(D-Delaware) clearly belonged to the second category. Biden, who in
the early 1990s had been quite sceptical about NATO enlargement, by
1997 had become his party’s most vocal proponent of enlargement.
Senator Biden had gone on a fact-finding mission to Poland, the Czech
Republic, Hungary and Slovenia in early 1997. For this reason he was
very much familiar with the issues involved. Biden wrote a report on the
trip and wanted this report to serve as a guidebook for other senators
who were less familiar with the topic of NATO enlargement.83 During
the hearings he took on this role a similar 'guiding' role.

http://www.nato.int/acad/fellow/98-00/hamster.pdf

Biden did lead Democrats, who were in the minority, in approving the treaty resolution that accepted the countries into the organization.

Although he was skeptical about enlarging NATO in the early 1990s, Biden changed his mind by 1997.

That year, he traveled to Eastern European countries, including Poland, and compiled a congressional report about the trip in an effort to promote NATO enlargement.

Biden was co-chairman of the Senate NATO observer group at the time.

http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/middle-east-north-africa/201100-biden-misspeaks-about-chairmanship-and-nato

[Gingersnap]

So, basically not chairman of the Committee in question during the events in question.

[phillygirl]

Meh...if he was chairman of some group and he got them mixed up, I don't have a huge issue with it. It's a memory fog, not a deliberate lie, I don't think. It's not like he was dodging bullets on a tarmac somewhere...

[Gingersnap]

Meh...if he was chairman of some group and he got them mixed up, I don't have a huge issue with it. It's a memory fog, not a deliberate lie, I don't think. It's not like he was dodging bullets on a tarmac somewhere...