Joe Biden's harrowing helicopter ride
Jake Turcotte
Who says Joe Biden isn't newsworthy?
It all started yesterday when Joe Biden was of a National Guard conference in Baltimore.聽 The Democratic nominee for vice president recounted a harrowing experience when he was聽 "forced down" over the mountains of Afghanistan.
鈥淚f you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where Bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me,鈥� Biden said. 鈥淐ome back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are.鈥�
Old news
Biden has referenced the helicopter incident before.聽 In fact, The Vote blog referenced it two weeks ago.聽 Biden was talking at a fundraiser in Chicago and gave the group a preview of what he was going to discuss in his upcoming debate with Sarah Palin.
We wrote, referencing a , that Biden was going to question Palin about "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan where my helicopter was forced down鈥�John McCain wants to know where Bin Laden and the gates of Hell are? I can tell him where. That鈥檚 where Al Qaeda is. That鈥檚 where Bin Laden is. It鈥檚 not in the country of Iraq."
But we were lazy.
Jake Tapper, over at ABC News, hadn't heard about the helicopter incident and smartly Googled it.聽 This is :
In February 2008, Biden -- along with Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. -- was on a chopper that made an emergency landing in the mountains of Afghanistan.
A snowstorm had forced them down.
A snowstorm?
Tapper went out to write:
"The weather closed in on us," Kerry told at the time in a phone interview from Turkey. "It went pretty blind, pretty fast and we were around some pretty dangerous ridges. So the pilot exercised his judgment that we were better off putting down there, and we all agreed...We sat up there and traded stories."
Kerry joked, "We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to do it鈥ther than getting a little cold, it was fine."
I'm here all week.聽 Try the veal...
In both retellings of his story, Biden seemed to have left out the part that it was a snowstorm that forced his chopper down, leading some to think that he was implying that it was brought down by hostile forces. This led to a this morning on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
Host Joe Scarborough, a conservative former member of the House, mockingly asked, "If bullets had gone another way, Joe Biden 聽may not have been here today?"
After plenty of banter, co-host Willie Geist responded, "Not bullets, kind of like bullets 鈥� snow. A snowstorm forced them to make landing."
Scarborough feigned, "I don't understand."
Geist was more than happy to explain, "Unless the Taliban controls the weather, the Taliban did not force this helicopter down."
Conservative or liberal, it was a funny exchange.
Heads up
Of course the McCain staff blasted out an email making certain everyone knew about it and 鈥� get this 鈥� had an opinion on the whole thing.
"Biden鈥檚 exaggeration of his Afghan helicopter ride is no surprise and reminds us of his daily assignment to embellish and fashion a record for Barack Obama where one simply does not exist," said McCain spokesman Ben Porritt.