Joe Biden’s gaffe in Poland

Joe Biden

I think we could all use a little laugh in light of everything that is going on both in this country and around the world, and what better way to have it if not at Joe Biden’s expense?

  Barack Obama sent Joe Biden to Poland in order to attempt to “reassure our allies” as tensions grow in Europe over the Russia/Crimea/Ukraine situation and he had this to say:

“Fifteen years ago, I was honored, as the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, to lead the fight for Poland’s admission into NATO”

  However, according to this article, there is one small problem with that statement:

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.

  Joe Biden did support the treaty, but he was not head of the Foreign Relations Committee as he claimed today. Here is what he said in support of the treaty back then:

“The committee, under Chairman Helms’ leadership, has been holding a series of comprehensive hearings since October on the pros and cons of enlarging NATO,” Biden said on the floor Feb. 11, 1998. “For 40 years, the United States loudly proclaimed its solidarity with the captive nations of Central and Eastern Europe who were under the heel of communist oppressors. Now that most of them have cast off their shackles, it is our responsibility, in my view, to live up to our pledges to readmit them into the West through NATO and the European Union as they qualify.”

  To quote Rick Perry–whoops!