If anyone needs further proof that the United States is racing for the exits in Iraq, just follow the bouncing ball that is Rick Santorum. A Republican leader in the Senate and a true-blue (or red) Iraq hawk, he has long slobbered over George W. Bush. But when Bush went to Santorum's home state of Pennsylvania to give his Veterans Day speech smearing the war's critics as unpatriotic, the senator went missing in action.

as James Fallows writes in the latest issue of The Atlantic Monthly, if we're not ready to invest many years in building a real Iraqi army, America's only alternative is to "face the stark fact that it has no orderly way out of Iraq, and prepare accordingly."