Ellington

AP is reporting: "Randy Beers sat on the porch steps next to his longtime friend and colleague Dick Clarke and the words came tumbling out in a torrent. 'I think I have to quit. ... I can't work for these people. I'm sorry, I just can't.' It was a few days before the start of the Iraq war in March 2003, and Beers was President Bush's special assistant for combating terrorism, a job he had held for only a matter of months. But Beers was no newcomer to government; he had worked on foreign policy for four presidents.

"To Clarke, Beers recited a list of complaints about Bush's foreign policy. Too fixated on Iraq. Not enough focus on al-Qaida. Weak on homeland security. Too political. In public, Beers, 61, said only that he was quitting for personal reasons.

"The real surprise came a few weeks later, when he signed on as foreign policy adviser to John Kerry, then still but one candidate in a pack of Democratic presidential contenders."