Sen. Biden announces intent to seek presidency

Sen. Joe Biden on Sunday told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he will seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008.

“I am running for president,” he told “Meet the Press” anchor Tim Russert. “I’m going to be Joe Biden, and I’m going to try to be the best Biden I can be. If I can, I got a shot. If I can’t, I lose.”

The senator from Delaware went on to say that he will be filing the necessary paperwork to create an exploratory committee by the end of the month.

Biden, who is the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,  is considered one of the Democrats’ most experience spokesmen on international affairs.

He has about $3.5 million in his campaign account. The exploratory committee will help him raise money and gauge support. He’s already campaigned in early voting states such as New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada.

Biden has been one of the most outspoken critics of President Bush’s policy in Iraq, saying Thursday that he believed top officials in the Bush administration had privately concluded they had lost Iraq and were simply trying to postpone disaster.

“I have reached the tentative conclusion that a significant portion of this administration, maybe even including the vice president, believes Iraq is lost,” Biden told The Washington Post. “They have no answer to deal with how badly they have screwed it up. I am not being facetious now. Therefore, the best thing to do is keep it from totally collapsing on your watch and hand it off to the next guy — literally not figuratively.”

Biden made the comments in an interview as he outlined an ambitious agenda for the committee, including holding four weeks of hearings focused on every aspect of U.S. policy in Iraq.

Biden expressed opposition to Bush’s plan for a “surge” of troops, and said he had grave doubts that the current Iraqi government had the will or capacity to help implement a new approach.

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