I was also watching Joe Biden on Meet the Press this morning, and he was saying that security in Iraq boiled down to three simple choices:

1) Do it ourselves, bearing all the cost in terms of money and human lives

2) Share the costs with other nations by accepting their help

3) Totally withdraw

Now he says that 3 is not an option. Okay, I agree. He says 2 is the only right choice, and basically goes on to paint a portrait of the Bush Administration as shunning all outside help, from the U.N., from NATO, from any and all countries on the planet.

I think it would be great to have some help in terms of securing Iraq. But the follow-up question I didn't hear out of Russert's mouth was this: Who's going to help?

I don't see countries lining up to send troops into Iraq. Who, specifically, is offering thousands of troops and gobs of money, and being turned away?

In fact, a supposed ally, India last week refused a U.S. request to send troops to Iraq.

Maybe I'm not paying close enough attention to the news, because I've missed all the public declarations of world leaders vowing to help with the security of Iraq.

Many critics are saying the troops levels are not adequate in Iraq right now. Last I heard we had about 140,000 troops there. Even if we withdrew less than a third of those troops, say 40,000, who the hell is going to pick up the slack? Which countries are not only going to replace any troops we withdraw, but bolster the troop level to levels adequate to please all the armchair generals?

So Biden got away with criticizing the President, while sounding like he was presenting a reasonable, multilateral alternative. But his point of criticizing the Administration for not getting help with Iraq could have been easily refuted with one simple little question:

Who would help?