The appointments of a woman who failed to heed intelligence warnings about 9/11 and of a man who took money from Enron reveal that Bush values loyalty, not competence

The malady so many of us are suffering from is called "Post-Election Selection Trauma" (Pest). I know this because more than 30 distraught Kerry supporters in Florida have contacted the American Health Association, and they will now be attending free therapy sessions that the association has scheduled for after Thanksgiving. Pest, says the association's Sheila Cooperman, is "a legitimate syndrome or disorder within the trauma spectrum" of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association.

Perhaps we should all be in therapy now that we are able to see how the second Bush administration is taking shape. I said here a fortnight ago that we could expect no moderation or magnanimity, and so it is proving. Thus Colin Powell, the closest to an enlightened voice in the administration's first term, is replaced by somebody who is demonstrably incompetent and unenlightened - but we will come to Dr Rice later. Meanwhile John Ashcroft, the attorney general who spent $8,000 from public funds to cover up the exposed breast of a Jennewein sculpture in the Hall of Justice, is replaced by Alberto Gonzales - who in turn advised his boss in a memo that the US president has the right to ignore the Geneva Convention and torture prisoners, a legal opinion that helped lead to the abuses of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

These are not the only important departures and appointments, but others have hardly been noticed. Richard Armitage, Colin Powell's deputy and a key moderate, is typical of those who have also quietly gone; I expect his replacement to be John Bolton, the under-secretary of state for arms control, who virulently hates the United Nations as well as North Korea and Iran. Before long, I predict, Condoleezza Rice and (probably) Bolton will order a purge of all in the State Department who are judged to be ideologically unsound - a process already furiously under way in the CIA.

Need I say more? The strain of wilful ignorance that has long since characterised George W Bush and his cabal no longer needs to be held back. Like their vocal media cheerleaders such as Fox News, they revel in their ignorance; it is good, and positively American, to rejoice in attitudes that the rest of the world sees as uncivilised. That approach made the US what it is today, gun culture and all. Being what foreigners call sophisticated, or even thoughtful, is way too namby-pamby.

The floodgates are therefore open for the righteous ideological revolution that, Bush and his followers fervently believe, was given a mandate by the American people on 2 November. The appointment of Rice last Tuesday shows that the foremost quality required in a second-term appointee is unswerving personal loyalty; she is an unattached, 50-year-old woman who idolises Bush and is a constant guest of the president and his wife at their Camp David weekends. She likes watching American football on television with them, and being treated like one of the family in the presidential household.

It does not matter, alas, that as national security adviser Rice presided over the two biggest debacles in US national security history - the failure to act on intelligence warnings before 11 September 2001 that al-Qaeda was planning a major attack on American soil, and the headlong rush to war in Iraq without adequate intelligence.

The 9/11 Commission, as it is universally described, heaped criticism on Rice for failing to react to intelligence warnings before 11 September. But "Condi" is still one of those people universally described as "brilliant" or as having a "formidable intellect" - an accepted premise that, personally, I have always found slightly mystifying.

She is always described, for example, as an expert on Russia and the old Soviet Union. But she singularly failed to foresee the fall of the Soviet Union. She has shown herself, as national security adviser, to understand little of the complications of the world. Even if she wanted to, she does not have the force of personality to disagree inside the cabinet with the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, who may go himself before long, but who has nevertheless been given the satisfaction by Bush of being seen to outlast his great internecine foe, Colin Powell.

Gonzales - a man who I have to say, like so many who espouse unattractive ideas, is charming to meet socially - is equally unquestioningly loyal to Bush, and also as devoid as Rice of any apparent guiding principles. He is thoroughly enmeshed in Bush's world: he was chief counsel at Vinson and Elkins, a firm that represented Enron and Halliburton, and in his campaign to become a judge in Texas he accepted money from Enron. He was appointed to the Texas Supreme Court by Bush when the latter was governor of Texas. As counsel to Bush in the first term, Gonzales duly blocked attempts to make public details of Vice-President Cheney's "energy commission".

It is thus hard to see what qualities Rice and Gonzales actually bring to the administration, other than their fanatical devotion to George Bush. I suspect that the Senate will grant confirmation to both; though if the Democrats decide to use Rice's confirmation hearing as a platform for questioning the war in Iraq we might see how Rice responds to being roughed up. How they decide to treat her will also be an indicator of the extent of the Democrats' ruthlessness in their opposition to Bush's second term.

We will see. Ideological blood is meanwhile being shed copiously at the CIA, where Porter Goss - a partisan Republican congressman for 16 years, who last summer was appointed by the Bush administration to do its will as the new CIA director - has been busily purging the ranks of the unfaithful. In particular, he is following the wishes of Vice-President Cheney in going after anyone within the CIA who is thought to have leaked CIA intelligence reports that there were no meaningful links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

Morale in the clandestine service is particularly bad as a result. A week or so ago, Stephen Kappes, who has worked for the CIA for 23 years and was the deputy director of operations, told friends that he was going - along with his deputy, Michael Sulick. Both are well regarded within the agency, unlike Goss himself. The CIA's deputy, John McLaughlin, has already resigned and believes it likely that there will be more resignations over Goss's insistence on following the ideological sweeps of the Bush administration; Jane Harman, an influential Democratic Congresswoman, says that the service is in "free fall".

So, stricken though we may all be by Pest, it is what is happening as a result of this month's presidential election that should concern us most.

The promotions of Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales, and the likely appointment of John Bolton as Rice's deputy, are all harbingers of a new crusade of ruthless self-interest by the Bush administration. Competence is not required: all that matters is a zealous loyalty to the cause, and an unquestioning willingness to trample on all who stand in its way.

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