A couple thoughts on the VP Debate

Dear Diane,
I watched most of the VP debate last night, suspended between fear and excitement about what gaffes might come out of Palin's mouth, or how possible it was that Biden would push too hard and make a sympathetic figure out of her, which would have made me very happy. What I saw was not much in the way of substance...until the subject of foreign affairs came up.
I heard alot of the same rhetoric coming out of Biden that I had heard this campaign; how it was wrong to go into Iraq; how McCain was lock step with Bush on going in; how it's time to get out. But it was the first time I had heard him use his own words on what he thought when the US went off to war in 2003. He said:
" But let's get straight who has been right and wrong. John McCain and Dick Cheney said while I was saying we would not be greeted as liberators, we would not - this war would take a decade and not a day, not a week and not six months, we would not be out of there quickly. John McCain was saying the Sunnis and Shias got along with each other without reading the history of the last 700 years. John McCain said there would be enough oil to pay for this. John McCain has been dead wrong. I love him. As my mother would say, god love him, but he's been dead wrong on the fundamental issues relating to the conduct of the war. Barack Obama has been right. There are the facts."
Let's assume what Sen. Biden is saying is true; He knew from the onset of this war, better than anyone else and this war would take "a decade, not a week, not six months". Well, my math might be a little fuzzy, but I think we're 5 years into this war. A war Senator Biden VOTED FOR! This man knew better, apparently, but felt it was still important to go in, and now with victory still far from assured, he falls in line with Obama on a plan to put timeline on when US troops will be out of Iraq...a full 3 and a half years ahead of his own timetable.
But that's only half of it. Literally seconds later, Sen. Biden busts out this gem:
"I always am focused, as you know Gwen, I have been focusing on for a long time, along with Barack on Pakistan. Pakistan already has nuclear weapons. Pakistan already has deployed nuclear weapons. Pakistan's weapons can already hit Israel and the Mediterranean...and by the way, that's where bin Laden lives and we will go at him if we have actual intelligence."
I understand wanting to get troops out of a place they never should have been to begin with, but this doesn't sound like a "bring our troops home" mantra. For all those who are voting Obama for that purpose, it's not going to happen. An exit from Iraq will only mean another failed state in the world that falls into the hands of a new dictator that takes control through increased bloodshed. And what happens to those American troops? They leave an increasingly stable situation in Iraq to go fight insurgents in the Mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where death and dismemberment are much more likely. The fighting is far from over, but at least John McCain is man enough to stand his ground and try and fix the problem he helped create. That's more than I can say for Biden.