Biden: McCain ‘dangerously wrong’ on foreign policy

Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden is expected to say Wednesday that GOP presidential candidate and "friend" John McCain does not have the judgment to be commander in chief. 

In a speech billed as a “major address,” the Delaware senator will try to set the stage ahead of Friday's debate between McCain and Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) on foreign policy.

{mosads}According to prepared remarks, Biden will list a litany of complaints against McCain’s foreign policy judgment in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — from McCain's prediction that U.S. troops would be “greeted as liberators” in Iraq to the dispute over which country is the central front in the war on terrorism.

“John is more than wrong — he is dangerously wrong,” Biden is planning to say in Cincinnati. “On a question so basic, so fundamental, so critical to our nation’s security, we can’t afford a commander in chief so divorced from reality and from America’s most basic national interests.”

Biden is also expected to offer the bold prediction that, if there is another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, it will not come from Iraq, setting up a criticism of McCain and President Bush for diverting troops from Afghanistan to Iraq.

“Mark my words: If, God forbid, there is another major attack on America, it will not come from Iraq," Biden plans to say. “It will almost certainly come from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border — where the Bush/McCain approach let down our guard and let our enemies off the hook.”

The full thrust of Biden's remarks was that Obama's early opposition to the Iraq war proves that it is the Illinois Democrat who has the judgment to be president.

Responding to the speech, McCain spokesman Ben Porritt said Biden “has gone through so many transformations on Iraq that he is no longer a relevant or credible voice. Just a short while ago Biden questioned Obama’s judgment and leadership on Iraq accusing him of ‘cutting off support that will save the lives of thousands of American troops’ when he voted against funding our military.”

Porritt added that the Delaware senator “now, in chameleon-like fashion, has blended his beliefs to fit Barack Obama who has attempted to legislate failure in Iraq and believes that success in Afghanistan is only possible through defeat in Iraq.”