While Condi Rice Indulges Her Love Affair With Fox News, Her Cohorts Rename Her Secretary of Suck

And this after they demote Negroponte from "intelligence czar" to Rice's lackey; available from many sources today but this is from Welcome to Pottersville's noting both Bob Novak's commentary and that of Jurassic Pork, blogmaster of WtP:

It’s kind of frightening to see Robert Novak on the warpath and speaking the truth for a change (the good kind of truth, the kind that doesn’t involve outing secret agent mothers of young children). Here are the two most revealing paragraphs, I feel, of Novak’s article in today’s Chicago Sun-Times:

Just what career diplomat Negroponte was doing as the new intelligence czar in the first place was puzzling. But to pull him out just as his on-the-job training as director had been completed reflects a panicky desire to fill the deputy secretary's post that had been unfilled for an unprecedented six months. Five other key State Department positions are either vacant or soon to be vacant.

Republicans in Congress, who do not want to be quoted, tell me the State Department under Secretary Condoleezza Rice is a mess. That comes at a time when the U.S. global position is precarious. While attention focuses on Iraq, American diplomacy is being tested worldwide -- in Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Korea and Sudan. The judgment by thoughtful Republicans is that Rice has failed to manage that endeavor.

Well, according to Novak and his sources, if more posts at Foggy Bottom keep getting vacated (not that anyone but the most perspicacious insider would notice), we may be welcoming the return of John “The Shining” Bolton, arms outstretched like an Abu Ghraib inmate, throwing flowers, nylons and chocolates at his Moustacheness.

Indeed, it’s hard to argue with Novak’s point: Rice had been George W. Bush’s Chief National Security advisor and was not what you’d call a career administrator or diplomat. Simply put, she doesn’t know how to manage a massive diplomatic bureaucracy such as the State Department, at least as capably as it was managed by Colin Powell and especially Bush’s ultimate Dollar a Year Man, Henry Kissinger.