"Joe Biden has always had a penchant for stretching the truth, but his made-up stories of being ‘shot at’ in Baghdad and his helicopter being ‘forced down’ in Afghanistan raise serious questions about his credibility," said McCain spox Ben Porritt. "Senator Clinton was forced to come clean after her ‘sniper fire’ remarks, and Joe Biden should hold himself to the same standard. How can Joe Biden lead if he can’t even be straight with the American people?”
Pushing for Biden to get the same scrutiny that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is currently getting, Porritt was referring to a couple incidents recently mentioned in a Fox News column suggesting that there's a double standard for Biden than there was for Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY.
The first, which we covered last week, was when Biden recently told a gathering of National Guardsmen and -women, "If you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where Bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me. Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."
Biden's chopper was indeed forced down, but it was by bad weather, which may not have been the impression given.
The McCain campaign reached back to 2007 for the second incident.
At the July 2007 CNN/Youtube debate Biden said the following about Iraq:
"Number one, there is not a single military man in this audience who will tell this senator he can get those troops out in six months if the order goes today. Let's start telling the truth. Number one, you take all the troops out. You better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die, number one.
"So we can't leave them there. And it's going to take a minimum 5,000 troops to 10,000 just to protect our civilians. So while you're taking them out, Governor, take everybody out. That may be necessary. Number three, the idea that we all voted -- except for me -- for that appropriation. That man's son is dead. For all I know, it was an IED. Seventy percent of all the deaths occurred have been those roadside bombs. We have money in that bill to begin to build and send immediately mine-resistant vehicles that increase by 80 percent the likelihood none of your cadets will die, General. And they all voted against it. How in good conscience can you vote not to send those vehicles over there as long as there's one single, solitary troop there?"
At issue was Biden's reference to his being "shot at" in the Green Zone in Iraq.
The Hill's Susan Crabtree followed up and reported that "Biden described three incidents on two separate Iraq trips in which he felt that he was shot at or might have been shot at. Only one of them took place inside the Green Zone, he said, and involved a 'shot' landing outside the building where he and other senators were staying. He added that the vehicle he was traveling in the day before might also have been hit.
"Biden said the incident happened in the morning while he and at least one other senator were shaving. Although he said it shook the building, he wasn't rattled enough to duck and cover.
"'No one got up and ran from the room—it wasn't that kind of thing,' he said. '…It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head.'
"Thinking about it now, he said, a more accurate comment would have been: 'I was near where a shot landed.'"
Crabtree reported that Biden's aides told her about an early morning in the Green Zone in December 2005 when mortars shook the trailers and buildings where Biden and his aides were getting ready for the day. "A soldier came by to explain what happened and said if the mortar fire continued, they would need to proceed to a shelter," aides said.
During the same trip, Biden's helicopter narrowly avoided a bullet as he flew to the Baghdad airport from the Green Zone.
In December 2004, Biden was on board a C-130 cargo airplane when its anti-missile system was triggered after it had been fired upon by a surface-to-air missile.
"When mortars are fired into the Green Zone or surface-to-air missiles are fired at a plane, they don't have names or addresses on them," Biden spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander told Crabtree. "The nuance of being shot at or shot near means nothing in a war zone. The point Sen. Biden was making is that Iraq is a dangerous place — for our troops, for Iraqis, for everyone."
.
