With friends like these, who needs the Viet Cong?

Vice President Joe Biden took an embarrassing swipe at Connecticut’s embattled Democratic Senate candidate, Richard Blumenthal, yesterday.

Addressing veterans at his home yesterday, Biden said, “I didn’t serve in Vietnam. I don’t want to make a Blumenthal mistake here. Our attorney general from Connecticut, God love him.”

Afterward, a sheepish Biden, long plagued by putting his foot in his mouth, said, “I have a bad habit of saying exactly what I think.”

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee at first posted Biden’s remarks on its Web site — then later yanked them.

Blumenthal’s campaign has floundered ever since it was revealed that he had been lying for years when he said he had served in Vietnam.