They started off with the least serious one, so that offense may be mildly jovial:

Some, of course, were just Biden being Biden. He smeared Dick Cheney as “the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history.”

To which we must take specific offense: After all, the founder of this newspaper, Alexander Hamilton, was killed in a duel by then-Vice President Aaron Burr. (Certainly Burr was a better shot than Cheney.)

But that’s a matter of opinion.

Actually, not really. Burr was planning secession and treason while still Vice President. You’d think that Biden would know this…

:snapping fingers: Right, he’s in regular contact with Barack Obama’s NatSec Ignorance Field now. It’d be about now that the first effects would become obvious.

Anyway, the Post gets a little more serious after this.

The NY Post takes Biden apart on a variety of his natsec gaffes – and his one on clean coal, which is honestly too good to pass up any relevant chance to bring up – but this is in some ways the important one:

“When . . . along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, ‘Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.”

Huh?

Assuming that Biden was referring to when, in 2005, American and French pressure helped the Lebanese people kick Syrian troops out of Lebanon, who ever thought NATO occupation of that deeply divided country was a good idea?

Let me put this the way that my scientist friends might: Senator Biden, you’re not even wrong. But let’s bring Michael Totten in on this one. Michael?

In Thursday night’s vice presidential debate between Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin, Biden said the strangest and most ill-informed thing I have ever heard about Lebanon in my life. “When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.” Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.” [Emphasis added.]

What on Earth is he talking about? The United States and France may have kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon in an alternate universe, but nothing even remotely like that ever happened in this one.

Nobody – nobody – has ever kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. Not the United States. Not France. Not Israel. And not the Lebanese. Nobody.

Yeah. Pretty much. If you’re the sort to get the hives from seeing the letters “CFR,” try the International Crisis Group, which likewise makes it clear that Hezbollah didn’t go anywhere. Heck, even Human Rights Watch admits that they’re still there and targeting Israel. What happened in 2005 was that a moderately successful anti-Syrian movement broke out; I say “moderately successful” because Syrian influence in the country is still strong, and if you believe some people, is exercised through groups like Hizbollah. So nobody’s really been “kicked out” at all, honestly – and while we’re on the subject: just when did you or Senator Obama call for the NATO occupation of Lebanon after the Cedar Revolution? That somehow slipped under my radar: lots of other people’s, too, judging from my Google searches.

Moe Lane