Tonight on the show, we'll bring you an exclusive interview with Vice President Joe Biden. For now, a couple of bits.
President Obama once famously called the war in Iraq a "dumb war." Rachel asked Mr. Biden if we've learned anything. From the transcript:
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: I think one of the lessons we've learned is you can go into an-- America is so powerful, has such an incredible military capability, that you can go to-- into any dictatorship and you can try to impose ... democracy, but it's gonna take you a trillion dollars and a decade, and you're gonna have to make a judgment whether or not you had better spent your time and effort doing something else to make the world safer than that.
And this exchange about Afghanistan, which U.S. forces aren't scheduled to leave until the end of 2014:
MADDOW: Is it possible that that war could end sooner than the American people are already expecting, at this point. Could that be wound down, as well?VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: It has the potential to be wound down. It's in direct proportion to how wound up the-- Afghan military is, how good they are, how quickly they come online, and how much responsibility the Afghan Government in Kabul is able to exert, politically, in the-- in-- within Afghanistan. For example, the president said that we were gonna withdraw, quote, "the surge," 33,000 forces by the end of this summer. And he said we would continue to keep a pace, that pace. We're not gonna slow this down.
We'll have much more on the show tonight, and the video clips soon and the clips are after the jump.
Vice President Biden on Iraq:And on Afghanistan: