Biden Fires Back at Republicans on Iraq

Sept. 3, 2006 — -- Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., shot back at the White House after a week of Bush administration speeches attempted to portray the war in Iraq as the central front in the war on terror and Democrats as appeasers who had not learned the lessons of past conflicts.

In an exclusive appearance on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Biden responded to a quartet of hard-line speeches from nearly every top administration official.

"When you run out of ideas, what you do is attack," he said.

"What is the plan for Iraq?" Biden repeatedly demanded. "There is no political solution offered here, there is no plan."

In a speech Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recalled the lead-up to World War I and World War II.

"I recount that history because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism," he said.

Rumsfeld's comments, which drew parallels between "appeasing" Nazi Germany and the debate surrounding the modern war on terror, evoked ire, particularly from Democrats.

"He knew exactly what he was doing," Biden told ABC News. "The only similarity I find between this war and World War II is that this war is shortly going to have lasted as long as World War II.

"The administration's very flat footed; it's almost dysfunctional right now," Biden said.

Biden rejected the administration's coordinated assertion that "Islamic fascists" were in some way a unified front.

"The unifying feature of this movement," President Bush claimed Thursday, "the link that spans sectarian divisions and local grievances, is the rigid conviction that free societies are a threat to their twisted view of Islam."

Biden acknowledged, "There are Islamic jihadists; they are in a sense united."

"We still have a giant problem with North Korea, a giant problem with Iran [and] a war -- a civil war -- in Iraq," he added. "The American people are united in thinking that they are not a single threat.

"It's sad that no one in the administration is speaking to what [the] solutions are," he added.