Porter Goss: Foot Soldier For Bush

This is Bush's nominee for the C.I.A. and his savvy, un biased analysis of North Korea's nuclear proliferation:

"On June 1, Goss took part in a Bush-Cheney conference call with reporters to critique Kerry's first national security speech [reports The Washington Post]. He described one of Kerry's nonproliferation proposals as 'naive,' and answered 'clearly yes,' to a question about whether Bush's policy toward North Korea was producing results. North Korea, he said, is 'no longer making the progress they were making at Yongbyon [their key nuclear production site] and other places because we have called their bluff.'

"In fact, since the Bush administration confronted the Pyongyang government, North Korea has thrown out inspectors, removed nuclear fuel from internationally monitored storage, and may have increased the size of its nuclear arsenal, according to U.S. intelligence."

The article further details Bush's reasons for nominating Goss, getting its scoop from Republican insiders. Bush's thinking has a lot to do with polls, trying to hurt the Dems politically, catching up with Kerry and so on but very little to do with Goss's fitness for the role. Ain't it sad that even Republicans don't offer up as reason number one that they believe Goss would be the best person for the job?

Maybe "foot soldier" should be changed to lapdog. Another Washington Post article today details Goss's recent transformation into a Bush water carrier, along with his "part of the problem" attitude towards the dysfunctional C.I.A.

"Over the past month, Goss, 65, exhibited little enthusiasm for the broad intelligence changes proposed by the Sept. 11 commission, urging caution instead and proposing legislation to expand the power and budget of his old agency.

"'It's regrettable that he's as close to the agency as he is,' said Frank J. Gaffney Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy, a conservative Washington think tank. 'He's been implicated in the dysfunctional congressional oversight that the 9/11 commission documented. I don't know that those things are disqualifying, but there may be other candidates that are better.'"