CIA chief Porter Goss, quit today under ridicule from pretty much everyone in Washington D.C. He had been on the job for less than two years.

President George W. Bush gave no explanation for the move, which a senior administration official said Bush had been discussing with Goss' boss, national intelligence director John Negroponte, for the last few weeks.

No replacement was named for Goss, who has come under fire inside and outside the agency during a difficult tenure. But an administration official said Negroponte could recommend a successor as early as Monday.

Bush is pursuing a shake-up of his staff in an attempt to present a new face on his team and rebound from sagging poll numbers. He now faces the difficult task of finding a high-profile candidate prepared to take over an agency in turmoil.

The CIA lost clout when it fell under a newly created director of national intelligence as part of reforms in response to intelligence failures over the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

An administration official said tensions between Negroponte and Goss resulted as the new intelligence arm sought to assert itself over the CIA and met opposition from the spy agency.

Mounting tensions came to a boil when Negroponte decided that many counterterrorism analysts from the CIA should be moved to the relatively new National Counterterrorism Center that was created as part of intelligence reforms.

Goss objected because he believed that would erode the CIA's capability, an intelligence official said. "He was standing up for the agency."

How many more of Bush' officials are going to either walk or be fired? I am glad that he is making some changes, he might actually get some people in his cabinet that know how to run Washington. I thought that Collin Powell was a great Secretary of State. Of couse, anybody would be better than Condoleeza Rice.

P.S.: Eighteen Days until I leave for Ireland. Yee Hah!