The senator also stated that he is the only candidate to have put forward a plan to get out of Iraq. His proposal to decentralize Iraq’s government recently received broad support in the Senate.

McCain had criticized the proposal, saying it would require hundreds of thousands of additional U.S. troops. Biden disagreed with the assessment, and charged McCain and the other GOP candidates of buying into the philosophy of President Bush that it is possible to create a strong central Iraqi government that would end sectarian strife.

“It will not happen in your lifetime,” Biden, who appeared on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” said. “Never before has a sectarian -- self-sustaining sectarian violence ended in any other one of four ways: You put in a dictator, you pick one side to beat the other side, you occupy for two generations, or you have a federal system.”

Biden’s harsh assessment of the GOP field and its foreign policy credentials came in response to a question about stepped up rhetoric on Iran, specifically former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s claim that Iran would not get nuclear weapons.

The Delaware Democrat said he could not make such a promise.

“But I can guarantee you I have a much better chance of stopping it from getting to them than he will,” Biden stated with regard to Giuliani.

“His claim to fame was he settled the city, in terms of its violence,” the senator said. “He did that with a Clinton-Biden crime bill.

Biden also said Democrats have to fight back in the so-called values debate.

“Tell me what your values are, whoever I'm debating for the presidency,” the senator stated. “Do you value people making an average of $1.4 million a year getting an $85 billion tax cut? Do you value that more than sending every kid who can’t get to college to college, that costs less than $9 billion?”