Biden WAS held up at the SA airport for refusing to separate from AA Congressmen there with him.

[Grendam]

31. ::sigh::

I get the feeling that not many of you have actually ready the NYT and WaPo articles:

From the Washington Post:

As the Times noted, Biden’s memoir makes no mention of any such arrest. As far as we can tell, Biden never mentioned this arrest before; neither can we locate any news accounts of him being arrested.

Biden’s first statement above is rather jumbled. Soweto, a township near Johannesburg, is nearly 900 miles from Robben — not Robbens — Island, which is off the coast of Cape Town. He appears to be referring to a trip in 1977, but the U.N. ambassador from 1977 to 1979, Andrew Young, told The Fact Checker that he was never arrested in South Africa.

“There is no chance I ever was arrested in South Africa, and I don’t think Joe was, either,” said Young, who as executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr. on civil rights demonstrations. “I was arrested twice, in Savannah and Atlanta.”

Young noted that memories can play tricks, but it isn’t easy to forget being arrested. He has had many people recall that they were arrested with him in Birmingham, Ala., but he must remind them that he was under specific instructions not to get arrested during the 1963 Birmingham protests. His friends may have been arrested in Birmingham, he said, but he was not.

Young is a former Atlanta mayor who supports fellow former mayor Mike Bloomberg but considers Biden a friend. He speculated that Biden was mixing up stories about congressional delegations that would fly into Lesotho, a landlocked country surrounded by South Africa. He said he believed he traveled on at least three trips with Biden when he was a member of Congress.

Young said that on one trip, “we were not jailed, but we were retained by South Africa police,” who would not let the lawmakers get back to a military base in Lesotho so they could board their plane. A colonel finally came and sorted everything out. Young, with a laugh, recalled that then-Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), who headed the delegation, “got pretty worked up about it.”

Young recalled also traveling with Biden on a trip led by Rep. Charles Diggs (D-Mich.). Biden appeared to refer to that trip when, as vice president, he issued a statement in 2013 on Mandela’s death — a statement that did not include mention of any arrest: “When I tried to enter Soweto township with Congressmen Andrew Young of Atlanta and Charles Diggs of Detroit, I remember their tears of anger and sadness.”

As for trying to see Mandela, Young said he repeatedly sought permission to visit Mandela between 1974 and 1990, but it was always denied. (Mandela was released in 1990 after 27 years in the isolated prison.) He said it was possible to visit Soweto to meet Winnie Mandela, Mandela’s then-wife, as well as other members of the African National Congress.

The articles goes on, but what is new is that Biden has never claimed to have been arrested before or that Biden was thanked by Mandela for being arrested.

The Washington Post concludes:

Biden has never been shy about tooting his own horn. So it’s pretty surprising that on the eve of a primary critical to his election hopes, he suddenly recalls being arrested in South Africa — and being thanked by Mandela for being arrested. There is no evidence for either claim; neither appears remotely credible. Biden earns Four Pinocchios.

I don't really see the point in saying Biden is right or this is a big gotcha thing by the media. His memory is failing him or he's embellishing in his pitch to African-American voters. There's a reason why his campaign did not respond to several requests.