MR. RUSSERT: Aren’t you now micromanaging?

SEN. BIDEN: Not at all. Did you hear what I said? I said “how to use the forces.” We have authority to tell him how to use the forces. If you get in there, though, and once you tell him—we have, we have a responsibility to tell him what the mission is. He does not have the authority to engage in a mission of the use of our force in a country or out of a country that we do not authorize. And that’s the thrust of what we’re trying to do here. We’re trying to fundamentally change what this president is using our forces for. He’s in the midst of a civil war with the objective of—a flawed objective of establishing a strong central government. That will not happen, and we have an obligation to push back as much and as often and as thoroughly as we can.

MR. RUSSERT: But, senator, there has been an evolution in your thinking because this is what you said in—to the Brookings Institution in ‘05. “We can” tell it—“We can call it quits and withdraw [from Iraq]. I think that would be a gigantic mistake. Or we can set a deadline for pulling out, which I fear will only encourage our enemies to wait us out—equally a mistake.” You’re now setting a deadline.

SEN. BIDEN: No, we’re not setting a deadline. Read what it says. It says the target date, left up to the generals to determine whether or not it is appropriate to withdraw all forces.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, a target date is setting a deadline.

SEN. BIDEN: No, no, but it leaves forces behind. We’re trying to change the mission, Tim. The mission is all of us have been arguing one exception, in both parties, that you’re going to have to leave forces behind in Iraq while this new government—if we actually get one up and running—is trying to function and trying to set up. The—look, the problem here is this is also a moving target. I also called for more troops in Iraq. I called for more troops on this program a couple years ago. That was in order to stop a civil war. Once the civil war began I was on the program after that saying all the troops in the world cannot settle a civil war. So what I’m having to respond to, like everyone else, is the president’s initiatives and his failures that, that required difference circumstances and different answers at different times. But the fundamental principle’s the same: We have an obligation to tell the president of the United States if we disagree with the mission for which he’s using American forces. And the mission that he has us on is to settle a civil war through establishing a central democratic government in Baghdad. That mission is strategically flawed.

MR. RUSSERT: But you no longer have a problem setting a date for withdrawal.

SEN. BIDEN: I no longer have a problem setting a target, a target that is flexible. There is no—there’s nothing in it says that every troop has to be out on April the 1st.

MR. RUSSERT: You said this back in October of ‘02: “We must be clear with the American people that we are committing to Iraq for the long haul; not just the day after, but the decade after.” Do you believe we’ll be in Iraq for a decade?