DICK CHENEY grew increasingly disenchanted with George Bush during the latter’s second term, believing the president was going soft in the so-called “war on terror”, it emerged yesterday.
The rift came to light as the former vice-president, the driving force behind many of Bush’s hardline actions – the invasion of Iraq, the torture of terrorist suspects – discussed his forthcoming memoirs with former colleagues and policy experts.
What emerged from the latest account of Cheney’s disgruntlement was that he thought Bush had gone soft in the last years of his presidency as he veered away from the “you are with us or you are against us” approach following 9/11.
In the last days of his administration, Bush halted the use of waterboarding for terrorist suspects, closed secret CIA prisons, sought congressional approval for domestic surveillance, and put out feelers to Iran and North Korea, which he had previously denounced as part of the “axis of evil”. According to those who have been speaking to the former vice-president, that shift stuck in Cheney’s craw.
“In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him,” an unnamed source told the Washington Post. “He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that.
The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney’s advice. He’d showed an independence that Cheney didn’t see coming.”
In contrast to Bush, who has maintained a discreet silence since Barack Obama’s election, Cheney has rebuked the new president as the Democrat disavows one Bush policy after another.
In this respect Cheney has been rather more committed than his former boss in defending the Bush legacy.
The first inkling of Cheney’s disenchantment came in a long account in Time magazine of his failed attempt to win a presidential pardon for his aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
Despite much badgering, Bush refused to pardon Libby, who was convicted in 2007 of perjury and the obstruction of an investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent.
As Cheney beavers away at his memoirs, some have pointed out the irony of what he is doing.
He was none too pleased when former Bush officials wrote theirs, particularly when Paul Bremer, who led the occupation of Iraq, revealed that Cheney shared Bremer's concern about US military strategy. – ( Guardianservice)