Ideas coming from 2008 Presidential Candidates - Joe Biden

I'm starting with Joe Biden, Senator from Delaware - because Delaware is the First State & because I was born in Claymont DE (where Biden moved when he was 10) & know his background better than the others. Biden has served in the US Senate through 7 presidencies, the end of the Vietnam War, the Iran hostage crisis, and the fall of the Soviet Union. He is current chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Biden has been a hardworking Senator who has displayed the capacity to learn from his mistakes (remember the Clarence Thomas hearings?) and - GASP- actually admits to making them. Two takehomes that impressed me from Joe Biden's interview on OnPoint radio :

His exit strategy for Iraq: Level with the American people - we cannot just pull all troops out of Iraq immediately. He mentioned the Iraqis working in the Green Zone who deserve protection, which will require thousands of US Troops. There is the need to keep the Iraqi conflict from metastasizing into a regional war. Biden would push the country to partition into a federation of 3 regions - Kurdish north, Sunni center, Shia south - with the policing and security for each region being handled by the respective militias. His model for this is the Caucasus after the disintegration of Yugoslavia, now partitioned into Serbia, Croatia, etc. He points out that much of the ethnic separation has already occurred in Iraq, and some important neighbors like Turkey are already seeing such partition as vastly preferable to a splintered, anarchic Iraq.

On the partisan bickering in the Congress: "Mike Mansfield taught me one of the most important things I've ever learned in the Senate: Don't question people's motives; question their judgement."

He also has a new book out-
"Promises To Keep: On Life and Politics"- and his campaign website is JoeBiden.com .