"...a very, very, very, very bad bet"

Per today's WaPo:

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."

[snip]

Biden said that Vice President Cheney and former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld "are really smart guys who made a very, very, very, very bad bet, and it blew up in their faces. Now, what do they do with it? I think they have concluded they can't fix it, so how do you keep it stitched together without it completely unraveling?"

Agreed, Joe.

I look forward to Congress finally -- finally! -- delivering on their constitutionally mandated role of Executive oversight. Perhaps once we shed light on the manipulations, distortions, and political scheming that lead us into this mess, we can help to avoid future foreign policy disasters...at least once this president leaves office and his advisors leave positions of influence.

[Fingers crossed!]