He opposed the troop surge of 2007,[127][130] saying General David Petraeus was "dead, flat wrong" in believing the surge could work.[135] Biden instead advocated dividing Iraq into a loose federation of three ethnic states.[136] In November 2006, Biden and Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, released a comprehensive strategy to end sectarian violence in Iraq.[137] Rather than continue the existing approach or withdrawing, the plan called for "a third way": federalizing Iraq and giving Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis "breathing room" in their own regions.[138] In September 2007, a non-binding resolution endorsing the plan passed the Senate,[137] but the idea failed to gain traction.[135] In May 2008, Biden sharply criticized President George W. Bush's speech to Israel's Knesset in which Bush compared some Democrats to Western leaders who appeased Hitler before World War II; Biden called the speech "bullshit", "malarkey", and "outrageous".[139]

Presidential campaigns of 1988 and 2008
1988 campaign
Main article: Joe Biden 1988 presidential campaign
Biden at the White House in 1987
Biden formally declared his candidacy for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination on June 9, 1987.