2008 Vice Presidential debate, at WUSTL: on War & Peace

Joe Biden: We will end Iraq War; McCain has no end in sight

BIDEN: With all due respect, I didn’t hear a plan. Barack Obama offered a clear plan: Shift responsibility to Iraqis over the next 16 months. Draw down our combat troops. Ironically the same plan that Maliki, the prime minister of Iraq and George Bush are now negotiating. Barack Obama and I agree fully and completely on one thing: You’ve got to have a time line to draw down the troops and shift responsibility to the Iraqis. This is a fundamental difference between us, we’ll end this war. For John McCain, there’s no end in sight to end this war.

PALIN: Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq and that is not wha our troops need to hear today. We’ll know when we’re finished in Iraq when the Iraqi government can govern its people and when the Iraqi security forces can secure its people. We are getting closer to that point, that victory that’s within sight.

Joe Biden: My push for Bosnian intervention saved 1000s of lives

BIDEN: I think the American public has the stomach for success. My recommendations on Bosnia. I admit I was the first one to recommend it. They saved tens of thousands of lives. And initially John McCain opposed it along with a lot of other people. But the end result was it worked. Look what we did in Bosnia. We took Serbs, Croats and Bosnians, being told by everyone, I was told by everyone that this would mean that they had been killing each other for a thousand years, it would never work. There’s a relatively stable government there now as in Kosovo. With regard to Iraq, I gave the president the power, because he said he needed it not to go to war but to keep the UN in line, to keep sanctions on Iraq and not let them be lifted.

Sarah Palin: No white flag of surrender on Iraq

PALIN: I am very thankful that we do have a good plan and the surge and the counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq that has proven to work, I know that the other ticket opposed this surge,

BIDEN: With all due respect, I didn’t hear a plan. Barack Obama offered a clear plan. Shift responsibility to Iraqis over the next 16 months. Draw down our combat troops. We’ll end this war. For John McCain, there’s no end in sight.

PALIN: Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq and that is not what our troops need to hear today, that’s for sure. You guys opposed the surge. The surge worked. Barack Obama still can’t admit the surge works. We’ll know when we’re finished in Iraq when the Iraqi government can govern its people and when the Iraqi security forces can secure its people. And our commanders on the ground will tell us when those conditions have been met. We are getting closer and closer to that point, that victory that’s within sight.

Sarah Palin: Divest from Sudan; enforce no-fly zone in Darfur

PALIN: We can agree on that also, the support of the no-fly zone, making sure that all options are on the table there also. America is in a position to help. What I’ve done in my position as governor, when I and others in the legislature found out we had some millions of dollars in Sudan, we called for divestment through legislation of those dollars to make sure we weren’t doing anything that would be seen as condoning the activities there in Darfur. That legislation hasn’t passed yet but it needs to because all of us, as individuals, and as humanitarians and as elected officials should do all we can to end those atrocities in that region of the world.

Sarah Palin: FactCheck: No, we’re not back to pre-surge troop levels

The surge was announced in January 2007, at which point there were 132,000 troops in Iraq. As of September 2008, that number was 146,000. President Bush recently announced that another 8,000 would be coming home by February of next year. But even then, there still would be 6,000 more troops in Iraq than there were when the surge began.

Sarah Palin: FactCheck: No, Afghan general did not say a surge would work

Point Biden. Gen. McKiernan clearly did say that surge principles would not work in Afghanistan, stating, ”The word I don’t use for Afghanistan is ‘surge.’ “ McKiernan stressed instead a ”sustained commitment“ to a counterinsurgency effort that could last many years and would ultimately require a political, not military, solution. However, it is worth noting that McKiernan also said that Afghanistan would need an infusion of American troops ”as quickly as possible.“