Pity the poor lefties who have leapt upon the resignation of CIA Chief Porter Goss like a pack of ravenous beasts, hungry for scandal and scalps, all the while frantically trying their best to connect dots that may or may not exist only in their fevered imaginations.

In truth, I haven’t seen this much wild speculation on the left since the Jeff Gannon/Guckert episode when the primary question asked in all seriousness by liberals was “Who did Gannon sleep with at the White House in order to get a press pass?” At that time, the dots used to connect Mr. Gannon – a conservative by day and possible gay prostitute at night – to any number of White House big shots up to and including the President, were laid out in exacting patterns of irrefutable stupidity, an exercise in paranoia and wishful thinking so profoundly laughable as to make the entire episode a revelatory metaphor for Bush Derangement Syndrome.

The Goss resignation carries with it the potential for the same kind of out of control miasmic obscurance of the facts in order to advance a theory that may or may not hold any water. In this case, it is the tenuous connection of Mr. Goss to the scandale du jour involving disgraced ex-Congressman Duke Cunningham, his crony Brent Wilkes, and so called “hospitality suites” at the Watergate hotel where liquor and cigars mixed with poker and prostitutes in an all too familiar Washington combination that involved Congressmen and government bureaucrats engaging in the typical manly-man pursuits of bluffing, raising, and fixing federal contracts.

The fact that dozens of current and former Members of Congress as well as others in the defense establishment attended these soirees has much of official Washington playing the “Name that John” game. Beyond that, there is the serious matter of how Mr. Wilkes was able to win defense and intelligence contracts and whether the use of prostitutes constituted a bribe of federal contract officials.

The FBI seems to be zeroing in on one such contract let by the CIA for $2.1 million involving Wilkes’s company ACDS, Inc. and the #3 at the Agency, Porter Goss’s good friend Dusty Foggo. Mr. Foggo was promoted to his position of Executive Director (a post that oversees contracts for the Agency) when Goss was appointed DCIA following a stint as supervisor of CIA Iraq contracts, a not insignificant position but nevertheless, his elevation raised many eyebrows. The Agency’s Inspector General has begun a separate investigation of the Wilkes contract which is standard procedure when questions are raised by law enforcement officials about a CIA employee.

Mr. Foggo has admitted attending the Wilkes parties at the Watergate but has denied any wrongdoing. Goss has denied ever attending the parties.

And there you have the bare bones of a scandal that I’m sure will be busting out all over around Memorial Day if not sooner. It appears that Mr. Wilkes is cooperating with the FBI and that there may be records of which Congressmen took advantage of Mr. Wilkes’ hospitality via a limo service that could have a connection to the hookers.

Sounds juicy doesn’t it? The problem for the left is how to get beyond the denial of Porter Goss and prove him a liar. To that end, their basic logic goes something like this:

1. Foggo knew Wilkes.
2. Foggo likes to play poker and smoke cigars
3. Foggo partied with Wilkes.
4. Goss knew Foggo.
5. Goss likes to play poker and smoke cigars
6. Goss is a lying S.O.B.

And that’s pretty much it. In order to believe that Goss is embroiled in the Hookergate scandal (I prefer “Watergate Redux” myself) you have to believe that simply by virtue of his close association with Mr. Foggo and that he along with most of the male population of the United States likes to play poker and smoke cigars, he is a liar and guilty as sin.

I am in awe of the cyberian logic used by the left in this case, a clear cut example of jumping to conclusions based on something that probably isn’t there. After all, if Hookergate was indeed the reason for Goss being forced out, I hardly think the President would have taken the time to give him a White House sendoff. Those kind of images come back to haunt, something that I’m sure brand new White House Press Secretary Tony Snow would have been able to tell the President.

No, I like my first take on this yesterday; that it was White House politics that led to Goss’s suddent departure. The West Wing had decided to back Negroponte in his turf battles with the intel agencies which made Goss a nuisance and expendable to boot. Couple that with the whiff of scandal emanating from his close associate Mr. Foggo (which gave Goss’s enemies fuel for the fire when they use the same kind of innuendo employed by the left in this case) and you have a perfectly logical and reasonable explanation for Goss’s departure. That, plus the fact that Mr. Goss himself probably wanted to leave sealed the deal.

Reading more than this into his resignation takes a certain kind of disassociation from reality that the “Reality Based Community” has justly become famous for.