ANALYSIS – Knucklehead Biden strikes again. And only China gains. In recent remarks, Joe Biden said his maternal uncle, 2nd Lieutenant Ambrose J. Finnegan's body was never recovered because he had met a gruesome end at the hands of cannibals after his plane was shot down by the enemy (Imperial Japan) over New Guinea in 1944.
The island was known as Dutch New Guinea, a part of Dutch East Indies at the time.
Biden initially made the comments at a veterans' memorial in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Biden's claim has created quite the stink, especially among outraged Papua New Guinea academics who slammed Biden for his “unacceptable” suggestion about cannibalism. He is also very wrong about almost everything else. (RELATED: Biden Refuses Cognitive Exam He Desperately Needs)
Later, speaking to steelworkers in Pittsburgh, Biden said of his “Uncle Boise” – “He flew those single-engine planes as reconnaissance over war zones,” adding: “He got shot down in New Guinea, and they never found the body because there used to be a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea.”
Finnigan's plane was an A-20 Havoc.
Biden also repeated the same story to reporters, adding that “he got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals in New Guinea” and that the U.S. government had recovered parts of the downed plane.
See this latest blooper, and Biden's many other flubs in the video below.
However, the official Defense POW/MIA Accounting agency said Finnegan's plane was headed to New Guinea on a courier flight and was “forced to ditch in the ocean” off the island's coast “for unknown reasons.”
“An aerial search the next day found no trace of the missing aircraft or the lost crew members,” it said. It also referred to Finnigan's aircraft as having two engines, not one, as Biden said.
So, Biden was wrong about the basic facts of his uncle's downing. The Army airman's airplane also likely crashed due to mechanical malfunction, not enemy fire. Finnigan's body was also never recovered because it sank in the ocean, not because he was eaten.
But Biden was also wrong about the rest too, for other reasons. Especially, about the cannibalism.
Michael Kabuni, at the University of Papua New Guinea, told The Guardian that cannibalism was previously practiced in very specific contexts and that locals “wouldn't just eat any white men that fell from the sky.”
The Guardian reported more of Kabuni's response to Biden's remarks:
The Melanesian group of people, who Papua New Guinea is part of, are a very proud people. And they would find this kind of categorisation very offensive. Not because someone says ‘oh there used to be cannibalism in PNG' – yes, we know that, that's a fact.
But taking it out of context, and implying that your [uncle] jumps out of the plane and somehow we think it's a good meal is unacceptable.”
According to experts the acts of cannibalism were mostly in the case of dead relatives that may have been eaten to keep their bodies from decomposing.
And who gains from Biden's flubs? Only China.
Others called Biden's claims as “unsubstantiated and poorly judged,” especially as the U.S. is trying to strengthen its ties with Papua New Guinea in a bid to counter an expansionist and belligerent China. (RELATED: China Creating Security Beachhead On Strategic Pacific Island)
Maholopa Laveil, also at the University of Papua New Guinea, said the claims were unhelpful and pointed out that it comes after Biden cancelled a brief trip to the country last year. “It paints PNG in a bad light,” he added.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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