Joe Biden: “As calmly as I can say it, I guess the point I am trying to make is, it seems to me we should compare apples and apples…”

“As calmly as I can say it, I guess the point I am trying to make is, it seems to me we should compare apples and apples and oranges and oranges. Does the Senator believe there is any more or less support on the part of the American people to defend Dresden than there is Warsaw? To defend Budapest than there is Florence? To defend any one of the countries that we are talking about, their cities, than any other European city? It seems to me that is the question. If we would not go, if we cannot get American staying power to defend Poland, then I respectfully suggest we cannot get American staying power to defend Germany. I would think, in America, if you ask for a show of hands, so to speak, on a question of whether we should defend anybody--but the reasonable comparison was these NATO nations that are seeking admission versus NATO nations that are already in. To compare this to Iraq, with all due respect, is comparing very different things. By the way, five votes were a close call. But in my father's generation it was one vote that allowed the draft. The British had already been pushed into the English Channel, all of Europe had already been conquered, Jews were already being slaughtered, and there were not a lot of people walking off this floor, or any other floor in this generation or any other generation, raising their hands to join. It was only after Pearl Harbor. I don't say that critically; I say that as an observation, a statement of history, historical fact.”