Biden to Speak at Son's Deployment Ceremony

DNC 2008: Beau Biden

By Perry Bacon Jr.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden will speak Friday in Dover, Del., at the deployment ceremony for his 39-year-old son Beau, who is headed to Iraq as part of a unit of soldiers from the Delaware National Guard.

Biden aides said that the event was not political and that he was speaking as a father and senator. Beau Biden, who is Delaware's attorney general, is a member of the Army's Judge Advocate General Corps. In a press release, National Guard officials said he might serve as an army prosecutor. He will go to Fort Bliss, Tex., for training before heading to Iraq.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was accused of politicizing the service of her 18-year-old son Track last month when she spoke at his deployment ceremony, and Biden aides have tried to avoid a similar charge. At the same time, Beau Biden introduced his father at the Democratic National Convention, and his father occasionally mentions his son's service, unlike Sen. John McCain, who has avoided discussing the experiences of his 19-year-old son Jimmy, a Marine who returned from a tour in Iraq in February.

"I'm proud, but I have to admit to you, I wish he wasn't going, I wish he wasn't going," the Delaware senator told Entertainment Tonight in an interview this week.

Biden's wife, Jill, in the same interview, said "there is a lot pride," but added, "there's not a morning that I open my eyes that I don't say a prayer that he comes home safely."
LinkHere