Biden defends Iran policy, talks possible Libya intel leak
(CBS News) At the presidential debate on foreign policy Monday night, Republican candidate Mitt Romney criticized the Obama administration's tact toward Iran, acknowledging current sanctions designed to curtail Tehran's nuclear program are crippling but saying they should be even tighter.
After the debate, CBS This Morning's Norah O'Donnell talked with Vice President Joe Biden about Romney's comments on Iran and how both candidates fared overall.
"Iran's more isolated today than it was when we took office," Biden said. "Iran had significant influence ... Today it is isolated." Biden said Romney was unclear about how he would have handled Iran differently. "The only thing that I heard ... Gov. Romney say tonight was that he would've done it sooner, when in fact, before he was -- well, I don't know what he was saying before," he said.
Final presidential debate: Libya
O'Donnell also pressed Biden on a Wall Street Journal story out this week, reporting that after the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya, the president was told in his daily intelligence briefings for more than a week that the assault grew out of a spontaneous protest, asking the vice president how the contents of the president's daily brief was publicly released.
"I don't know how that happened," Biden claimed. "I know that the director of Central Intelligence said everything that the president said, that I said, that Susan Rice said ... was exactly what ... the intelligence committee was giving us and briefing us on."
Biden moved away from foreign policy and touched on the general state of the campaign in the last two weeks -- he maintained "there's still a great deal of hope and change" -- and said that the Obama campaign is not overly concerned about the increasingly favorable poll numbers for Romney in recent weeks. "You knew this election was going to tighten up no matter who our opponent was," Biden said, before adding, "And it's totally appropriate to point out that Gov. Romney and Congressman Ryan have moved their positions drastically."