Joe Biden: “I don't doubt that. You were wrong then, you are wrong now. But that is irrelevant. The point is this. I was responding…”

“I don't doubt that. You were wrong then, you are wrong now. But that is irrelevant. The point is this. I was responding to a specific assertion. The Senator said: How will this body ever reject something that is put on our desk that is embossed, that has worldwide publicity, that the whole world is looking at, that all of our European friends are seeing? How could we ever reject anything like that? I point out that we have done that. We have no problem rejecting things in this place that we don't think we should do. I might add that we had multiple hearings in my committee--I don't remember, but I suspect also in my friend's committee, the Armed Services Committee. We had more than a dozen hearings before we voted on expansion, on whether or not the aspirant countries were qualified. Some of us, I think including the Senator from Virginia, traveled to the aspirant countries, sat down with their leadership, sat down with their chiefs of staff, sat down with their military and parliamentary leaders, and looked at their books--literally, not figuratively. I know I spent, with my colleague Dr. Haltzel, about 7 days doing that in the aspirant countries: Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic. I spent that time as my other colleagues did. So I have no worry that we are going to have time. I am responding to the point made by the Senator, which is: Hey, look, this is a fait accompli. We are getting set up here.…”