More likely, however, is the possibility Goss is not the sort of team player preferred by the Straussian neocons. “Behind Mr Bush’s public explanation for the CIA chief’s departure lies a second authorized version, according to which Mr Goss lost a battle for power and prestige with John Negroponte, the politically adept new director of national intelligence, a post created to oversee all US intelligence-gathering after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,” explains the Christian Science Monitor.

Negroponte, of course, is the right man for the job, considering his track record as ambassador to Honduras where he micromanaged death squads and oversaw the U.S. funded and supported Contra war against Nicaragua. In short, Negroponte, now filling the newly minted position of national intelligence director, is more vicious than Goss, who vacillated in weak-knee fashion when he admitted he is not qualified to be CIA DCI (see this New York Daily News article), an unbecoming act for a card-carrying member of the Clash of Civilizations and Hubris gang in the White House and Pentagon.

Meanwhile, Congress critters remain clueless on Goss’ likely successor, Gen. Michael Hayden. “I do believe he’s the wrong person, the wrong place, at the wrong time,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich, told ABC News. “We should not have a military person leading a civilian agency at this time.” Obviously, Mr. Hoekstra does not understand what’s going down in the neighborhood—as an insider of the neocon wing of the Pentagon, defender of NSA snooping, and enemy of the Bill of Rights, Hayden is not only the obvious choice, he is a near perfect choice for the neocons. Hoekstra’s “sentiment was echoed by Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, who said Hayden’s military background would be a ‘major problem,’ and several Democrats who made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows. Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., said Hayden could leave agents with the impression that the CIA has been ‘just gobbled up by the Defense Department.’”

As a member of the Subcommittee on Technology Terrorism and Homeland Security and U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Joe Biden should well understand what is going on here, but instead he plays stupid, pretending to be the see-no-evil monkey. Certainly the Pentagon has “gobbled up” the CIA as the CIA was recalcitrant to the demand before the invasion of Iraq it enter the Straussian neocon fold (or rather the Dark Side) and essentially act as a subservient tool and incubator of lies in service of the neocon plan to invade dozens of countries, as the neocons readily admit.

Jane Harman, California representative, and “leading Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said Hayden ‘made a big mistake’ by defending the legality of the eavesdropping program in December during a speech at the National Press Club.” It is simply not realistic to believe Ms. Harman, as a “leading” Congress courtesan, is sincerely bollixed by the well-known neocon plan to turn America into a surveillance and police state. Or maybe she was napping during Katrina, when the Posse Comitatus Act came under blistering attack and military contractors were sent to confiscate (or steal under penalty of death) entirely legal firearms.

As usual, the neocons will get pretty much everything they want and will continue to do whatever they want—including the further eviscerating the Constitution—until they are dragged kicking and screaming from the White House and Pentagon, an unlikely prospect at best. Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Jane Harman, and Peter Hoekstra may whine about the appointment of a military careerist and advocate of trashing the Bill of Rights (never mind he is sworn to uphold the Constitution) to the CIA, but they are essentially powerless to do anything about it.