Biden on Iraq

Smart speech from Joe Biden (pdf) about national security policy today. Biden is especially good at expanding upon the line of attack launched by Barack Obama in last week's Petraeus-Crocker hearings: that the two main threats in Iraq, the Sunni terrorists and the Iranians--are either diminishing (Al Qaeda in Iraq) or engaging in beahvior (the Iranian-supported harassment of U.S. forces by Shi'ite militias) that wouldn't take place if we began a careful withdrawal.

But it's clear that Biden gets the contradictory nature of the current Bush policy: things are going great...but we can't come home, and we can't say what conditions would lead us to come home. He also gets what the real sticking point is--the long-term (100 year or so) military presence that the Bush Administration, and John McCain, want in Iraq.

Update: Smart comment from reader Sean DeCoursey--who obviously knows this stuff from first-hand experience:

Is Iran helping/funding/arming some of the militia's in Iraq. Yep, without a doubt. I remember taking prisoners back in 2003 who spoke Farsi but not Arabic.
However, the "Iran is funding the militia's story" is just a huge smokescreen to hide who's really armed, equipped and funded the insurgency no matter who's been waging it: the American taxpayer.
Every time you see on the news that hundreds of "thousands of weapons are missing in Iraq", or that "tens of millions of dollars are unaccounted for" or, in the single most underreported story of the war, what exactly happened to all of the Iraqi Army's weapons and supplies after we invaded, fired them, and didn't guard any of their depots on the way to Baghdad, you've just been informed that random groups of people in Iraq, (many of whom are hostile to the U.S. or towards other Iraqis) have just won the weapons, explosives, and cash lottery.
Obscuring the role that corruption and ineptitude have played in arming and equipping our foes in the interests of drumming up another war just makes me sick beyond belief.
And again, yes, it is most definitely true that the Iranians are funneling money and arms into Iraq, but so are the Saudis, Jordanians, and Syrians. In other words, every country that shares a border with that unstable mess of a country is looking out for their own national interests by doing what they can to help promote the faction most favorable to them. Pretending that these actions are anything beyond that stretches credulity.