Washington ? Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said Thursday 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.”

Biden made the comments in an interview as he outlined an ambitious agenda for the committee, including holding four weeks of hearings focused on every aspect of U.S. policy in Iraq. The hearings will call top political, economic and intelligence experts, foreign diplomats, and former and current senior U.S. officials to examine both the current situation in Iraq and possible plans for dealing with the crisis. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will likely testify Thursday to defend the president’s new plan, but at least eight other plans will be examined over several sessions of the committee.

Other witnesses invited for at least 10 days of hearings include former national security advisers and secretaries of state, including Brent Scowcroft, Sandy Berger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright and George Shultz.