Joe Biden dropped this little nugget of previously unknown information in a post-debate chat with Fox News’s Chris Wallace Friday evening:

Biden: (at 0:18) “The fact of the matter is, the only thing succeeding in Iraq right now is the plan that Barack and I talked about that Petraeus is implementing — giving local control in the very areas with a limited central government.”

This comes as news to everybody who has followed events in Iraq and the political debates surrounding events and strategy there, including myself — and I have, of course, followed all of the above quite a bit.

This revelation suggests that we are to view the actions of both of these men with regard to Iraq in a new light.

For example, I suppose we are now expected to believe that when Biden said, “The president and others who support the surge have it exactly backwards,” in December 2006, he secretly meant, “Go through with the surge, Gen. Petraeus — I believe in you!”

Or, when Biden was pushing for Iraq to be divided into into three ethnically-homogeneous, unsustainable “states,” then abandoned, he was actually working behind the scenes with the freshman Senator from Illinois and General Petraeus to craft a plan to make Iraq more unified and sustainable.

We are likewise expected to believe that, when Barack Obama sponsored legislation that would have withdrawn U.S. troops from that country beginning last year — at the most sensitive point to date in the entire conflict — with a full retreat having been completed by this past March, thereby rendering every single achievement made possible by the ‘Surge,’ from the rising up of Concerned Local Citizens, to the driving out of al Qaeda in Iraq, to the quelling of sectarian violence, to the growing political reconciliation that made possible legislation passed this week setting the stage for provincial elections in that country, entirely null and void, he was actually laying the ground work for success there. Good thing General Petraeus was somehow in on the secret there, and understood that all of Obama’s posturing was actually cover for Petraeus to do what he has done to date in Iraq.

Or not. What this actually was, was simply this: perhaps the most brazen engagement in revisionist history — if not the most brazen outright lie — ever to leave the lips of a man who is known for his embellishments.

For a staunch opponent of all progress in Iraq to attempt to claim credit for the blood, sweat, tears, and sacrifice of those Americans who have given their all to make that country the near-success it is today is nothing short of a travesty, and clearly shows the depths to which Barack Obama and his ultimate-Washington-insider sidekick Joe Biden will do to win an election, regardless of the dishonesty in which they have to engage in order to do so.

And that’s just pathetic.