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WASHINGTON -- Vice President Joe Biden, known for his controversial off-the-cuff remarks, is taking heat for his recent comment that "the Taliban, per se, is not our enemy."
Right-wing bloggers and commentators have attacked Biden's comment, and presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Wednesday called it "one of the most strange comments ever to be uttered by the lips of a vice president."
"And this vice president, in particular, [has] said some strange things," he added.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said his office has been "flooded" with comments and tweets from service members, including one who asked, "If they aren't the enemy, who has been shooting at us all this time?"
"For the vice president of the United States to make a statement like that is an insult to the men and women who are serving today," McCain said on Fox News Tuesday night. "But also, what about the families of those who have been killed by the IEDs that the Taliban have manufactured, the same Taliban that sheltered bin Laden?"
Biden's spokeswoman, Kendra Barkoff, said Biden's statement wasn't incorrect and merely restated the administration's goal to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan."
"Politicians who criticize his remarks are either ignorant of why we are fighting in Afghanistan or playing politics with issues of war and peace," Barkoff wrote in an email. "Either way, they are profoundly wrong."
Biden made the comment during a Dec. 15 interview, released Monday, with Newsweek contributor Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and Biden's partner in a 2005 plan for a political solution in Iraq.
Biden said it would be "good enough" if Afghanistan were no longer a haven for terrorists set on harming the United States and its allies. But, he added, "We're not there yet."
"Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy," Biden told Gelb. "That's critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us."
He said the United States is on a "dual track" with Afghanistan to continue targeting al-Qaida and making the Afghan government strong enough to negotiate with the Taliban without being overthrown by them.
"And at the same time," he continued, "try to get the Taliban to move in the direction to see to it that they, through reconciliation, commit not to be engaged with al-Qaida or any other organization that they would harbor to do damage to us and our allies."
In a briefing Monday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the U.S. invaded Afghanistan because al-Qaida launched its 9/11 attacks from there, not because the Taliban was in power. Biden's comments reflect that "while we are fighting them ... the elimination of the Taliban is not the issue here," he said.
Asked whether Biden's comment was regrettable, Carney said only "when taken out of context."
The Afghan government supports reconciliation with the Taliban, provided the Taliban rejects al-Qaida, renounces violence and supports the Afghan constitution. The Obama administration supports that policy.
McCain said Biden has "some cockamamie idea" that the United States can negotiate peace with the Taliban as troops leave the country. All U.S. combat troops are scheduled to withdraw by the end of 2014.
He referred to news reports that the administration is considering releasing Taliban prisoners from the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"This is the most wrongheaded kind of thing that I have ever encountered," McCain said.
Romney began lashing out against Biden immediately Monday, saying his statement to Newsweek was "bizarre, factually wrong and an outrageous affront to our troops carrying out the fight in Afghanistan."
"The Taliban is clearly a bitter enemy of the United States," he said in a statement. "Vice President Biden's statement to the contrary calls into question the White House's leadership in Afghanistan -- or lack of it."
Biden's comment also gave former Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder another opportunity to argue that Biden should be replaced. Wilder, a Democrat, views Biden as a gaffe-prone liability to the administration. He called last year for President Barack Obama to dump Biden and make Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton his running mate in 2012.
"I fought in Korea, front line," Wilder said Tuesday on Fox News. "I knew who the enemy were. The enemy were the people who were firing at me and shooting at me."