Flailing amid the rubble

Scott Nelson/World Picture Network, for The New York Times

When Senator Joe Biden who represents the top tier of U.S. corporations knows the U.S. has crashed in Iraq, we've crashed.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday that he believes top officials in the Bush administration have privately concluded they have lost Iraq and are simply trying to postpone disaster so the next president will "be the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof," in a chaotic withdrawal reminiscent of Vietnam.

"I have reached the tentative conclusion that a significant portion of this administration, maybe even including the vice president, believes Iraq is lost," Biden said. "They have no answer to deal with how badly they have screwed it up. I am not being facetious now. Therefore, the best thing to do is keep it from totally collapsing on your watch and hand it off to the next guy -- literally, not figuratively."

Meanwhile the usually more realistic Juan Cole has gone all goo-gah over the notion that "the professionals" have taken charge. New players -- Gates, Petraeus, Crocker, whoever -- adult and well-meaning as they may be, can't fix the unfixable. They can merely serve as cover for the criminals who launched this war. If they are really such paragons, will they stand up to a sociopathic president?

And the killing goes on.