Fresh from defending Saudi Arabia and threatening to remove U.S. loans to Israel, Secretary of State Colin Powell has vehemently put down rumors that he intends to resign at the end of President Bush's first term.

What's wrong with this picture? Is Powell protesting too much? Indeed, he may be.

Numerous Bush insiders say that Powell does in fact intend to resign at the end of his

first term, as will his deputy, Richard Armitage. They plan to form an international consulting firm along with Assistant Secretary of State Pat Harrison.

This is nothing new. Henry Kissinger, William Cohen, Lawrence Eagleburger and Brent Scowcroft all went into the foreign-consultation business.

In Washington, the investment firm known as the Carlyle Group is chock full of such ex-diplomats. Papa Bush's former secretary of state, James Baker, and former British Prime Minister John Major are part of the Carlyle operation. The group's most famous advisor is former President George Herbert Walker Bush himself. He frequently travels to Saudi Arabia with John Major to work on Carlyle's behalf.

Former CIA agent Robert Baer's new book, "Sleeping with the Devil," chronicles the many former U.S. government officials who have taken seats on the big-money Saudi gravy train. Because of their continued connections with people in the foreign-policy agencies, one wonders whether the United States is capable of developing Saudi policy that is consistent with American interests rather than Saudi oil and money.

Will Powell also jump on the Saudi gravy train?

Anyone's guess. We know that he was sometimes at odds with the neo-con militancy of the new Bush policy of pre-emptive strikes against terrorists. But Powell is a principled man who was an essential player on the Bush team, and he put his own prestige on the line to bring support to the war-making U.N. Resolution 1441.

Though sometimes characterized as soft in his support of Israel and insufficiently hard-line with Iran and Syria -- not to mention Saudi Arabia -- there is no real question that Powell has acted under the directions of the president, as any good secretary of state must.

That said, maybe it's time to lessen the supply of former American diplomats who are ready to go to bat for Saudi Arabia. Maybe its time that George W. Bush remove some ambiguity from the position of U.S. secretary of state. Continued...