In what was widely being described as the most important and anticipated speech so far of his presidency, given the magnitude of horrific images the world beheld coming out of Kabul on Monday, Biden's words can be summed up with the main theme of shouldering off the blame to the Afghan people, Trump, and prior administrations (though conveniently not Obama of course). 

He took no questions even as the press corps erupted in urgent questions, walked away and the video feed was abruptly cut. Filled with smoke and mirror talk of "graveyard of empires" (as if Biden has been reborn as a noninterventionist Libertarian or something), two-thirds of the way in he briefly admitted the main issue at hand over the past 48 hours, bluntly acknowledging that the country's collapse "did unfold more quickly than we anticipated"...Well, yes - and all while you were on vacation at Camp David Mr. President.

"I stand squarely behind my decision," Biden began the remarks from the East Room. "After 20 years, I've learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw US forces." But in terms of learning the "hard way" - a number of pundits noted the "ice cold indifference" to the monumental human suffering the world continues to behold unfolding there.

"The choice I had to make as your president was to follow through with that agreement, or to go back to be prepared to go back to fighting the Taliban in the middle of the spring fighting season," he added.

"Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to be nation-building," Biden asserted, though we seem to recall pretty much every president since Bush kicked off the 20+ year long fiasco speak precisely of "democracy promotion" and "bringing women's rights to Afghanistan" etc etc...