Obama says Biden has 'good instincts' despite Iraq War vote

Former president says Democratic nominee has “good instincts” and learned lessons in past

Former president Barack Obama praised Joe Biden’s “good instincts” and said he would use them as president, despite voting for the Iraq war.

In an appearance on the “Pod Save America” podcast, Mr Obama discussed how a Biden administration would be able to implement “actual policy that works”, and that lived-up to his “good instincts”, having learned lessons from almost five decades in politics.

On the Iraq war, the Democrat argued that Mr Biden “learned a lesson from that”, having later admitted that his vote for the Iraq War as a senator "was a mistake".

“As you know, he was probably the person who was most restrained in terms of use of military force among my senior advisers during the course of my presidency,” Mr Obama told the podcast, which became available on Wednesday, of his vice president.

“He consistently believed that we should show restraint and humility and think through the use of military power and had huge confidence and faith in the use of diplomacy as a strategy for showing American leadership. And that instinct I think is going to trickle out,”

Describing the presidential nominee’s so-called “North Star”, Mr Obama predicted that “at the same time, you’ll have a lot of people around him who were able to translate his good instincts into actual policy that works,”

“He understands the importance of surrounding himself with people who are smart and are, you know, believe in science and believe in expertise and believe in, you know, institutional knowledge and experience,” said the Democrat.

Mr Obama, who endorsed Mr Biden as the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee in April, is due to make more campaign appearances as the 3 November election nears.

Speaking to MSNBC last month, the Democratic presidential nominee said he backed then-president George W. Bush over claims Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and had voted because he wanted to "prevent a war from happening."

"The threat was to go to war," he told “The Last Word”. "The argument was because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, so he said that 'I need to be able to get the security council to agree to send in inspectors to put pressure on Saddam to find out whether he's producing nuclear weapons.' ”

Mr Biden’s Republican opponent, Donald Trump, has previously taunted the former vice president over his support for the war, and claimed that US military leaders “want to do noth­ing but fight wars”.