Since Porter Goss announced his "resignation", I haven't heard anyone in the press or the punditocracy ask question that's been at the forefront of my mind - how did someone who was such a blatant party hack, someone who, by his own admission, was unqualified to take a position in the CIA - how was this man confirmed in the Senate by a vote of 77-17? How much of a failure must we consider the great "deliberative" body of the Senate that they let this man slip by back in the late summer of '04, with hardly a whimper?
77-17 - this represents frightful bi-partisan complicity in an act that can now be seen for what it is - a criminal sell-out of the intelligence gathering capacity of the country. The vote was cast on September 22, 2004 - barely 6 weeks before the Presidential election. I remember screaming about it at the time - I take solace in the fact that my two senators at the time - Corzine and Lautenberg - voted Nay. But Russ Feingold voted yes. So did Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. Joe Biden and Evan Bayh voted Yes. Chuck Schumer voted yes. John Kerry didn't vote - he was busy.
One hundred years from now historians will look back on this vote and wonder - what were they thinking? Certainly there are other surrounding events that are more monstrous in their scope - we see new ones each day. But I can't imagine anything representing more of a wholesale abdication of responsibility than the senate blithely rubber-stamping a second-rate party hack to become the Director of Central Intelligence in the midst of a war that requires, more than ever, a sharply-focused intelligence effort. Now, 19 months later, I don't think we can even begin to gauge the damage that's been done.
Shame on the Goss 77.