In a move which surprised no one, Colin Powell is moving on, along with Paige, Abraham, and Veneman:

In his remarks, Mr. Powell said that he intended to remain active in carrying out his diplomatic duties until his last day, noting that "we have to make sure that we continue to pursue the global war against terror, we have to consolidate the very significant gains we've seen in Afghanistan, and we have to make sure we defeat this insurgency in Iraq."...In that letter, Mr. Powell also expressed satisfaction that he had been part of administration efforts that "brought the attention of the world to the problem of proliferation, reaffirmed our alliances, adjusted to the post-cold war world and undertook major initiatives to deal with the problem of poverty and disease in the developing world."...The secretary further said that the Bush administration needed to continue working on "strengthening our alliances," particularly in Asia, "to find a solution to the North Korean nuclear program." And referring to Iran's nuclear program and the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, Mr. Powell also counseled that "we have to work with our European Union friends and with the I.A.E.A. to find a solution to the Iranian nuclear program." Elsewhere, he went on, "the president also has an active agenda with respect to trade - open trade, with respect to the Millennium Challenge Account, development funding, going after H.I.V./AIDS, building on the partnerships and alliances that we have around the world."...Later, after meeting with Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Silvan Shalom, Mr. Powell said he would press hard in his remaining days in office for a lasting Middle East peace. "We're going to keep moving forward," Mr. Powell said. "It's the president's policies that are being pushed and implemented, not Colin Powell's."

Of course, it was always the President's policies that were being pushed, not Colin Powell's, contrary to the enduring, if unjustified, hopes of some on the left. We're likely to hear from some over the next few days that the administration's foreign policy will get really unhinged now that Powell isn't there to be a voice of reason any longer. To them I'd say: Where have you been the past four years? The sad truth is that every time Powell made a policy statement deviating from the Bush Doctrine, someone else was sent out to retract it soon after. And those occasions were the exceptions. Colin Powell was the friendly face of nasty policy for four years, and unfortunately seems to have had some success selling ideas, like Iraqi WMD, to those who otherwise would have been more skeptical. Either he wrongly believed in that nasty policy, or he didn't and wrongly stayed on anyway. I suspect it's closer to the former than many seem to have assumed. Either way, let's hope Condoleeza Rice, who no one I know on the left has ever imagined secretly agrees with them on anything, is less successul selling four more years on militarism and brinksmanship.