Former US Vice President Joseph R. Biden said Thursday during a presidential debate that he fought within the Obama administration against surging troops to Afghanistan, saying it was a mistake to allocate forces to a conflict that the United States could not win.

Biden was challenged at the Democratic debate over a Washington Post article that reported the military misled the pubic over the war, publicly saying it was going well while internal reports suggested otherwise.

I�m the guy from the beginning who argued that it was a big, big mistake to surge forces to Afghanistan, Biden said, I argued against it constantly.

The first thing I would do as the president of the United States of America is to make sure that we brought all combat troops home and then enter a negotiation with the Taliban but I would leave behind special forces in small numbers to be able to deal with a potential threat unless we get a real good negotiation accomplished to deal with terrorists, Biden said.

Other accounts of the Obama administration�s approach to the war have noted Biden�s opposition to the counter-insurgency doctrine, or COIN, championed by General Petraeus and others in Afghanistan and Iraq, in favor of a more limited counter-terrorism mission.