There is a cheney growing on the presidency
Has U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney become so much of an albatross around his boss' neck that he will have to go?
While that question may appear a bit premature at the moment – speculation about the tenure of President's George W. Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, remains on the front burner – it has loomed over the White House since Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, was indicted 10 days ago.
Libby has been charged with perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with the "outing" of a covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative, whose husband accused the administration of taking the U.S. to war under false pretenses.
But Cheney's fate rests less with whether Libby tells prosecutors that his former boss encouraged him to leak the operative's identity to prominent Washington journalists than with the White House's calculation that the most powerful vice president in U.S.. history has become a serious political liability, both for Bush and for increasingly panicked Republican lawmakers desperate to retain control of Congress in next year's elections.
Cheney's public approval ratings have dropped to an all-time low, according to the most recent Gallup soundings, with a majority of respondents believing that the vice president at least knew about Libby's actions. In his latest National Journal column, public opinion analyst William Schneider asserted that the president now has a "Cheney Problem."
A big part of that problem is Iraq, and particularly Cheney's prewar role as the most aggressive administration official to promote the invasion. With two-thirds of the public now believing that invading Iraq was a mistake, and more than half saying that the administration "deliberately misled the American people" about the reasons for the invasion, Cheney is particularly vulnerable.
According to Newsweek, Cheney's power has already shriveled to virtually nil. It quoted "a senior official sympathetic to Cheney's policies" last week as saying, "You can say that the influence of the vice president is going to decrease, but it's hard to decrease from zero." MORE ON...
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=7948
Last month, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, ret. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, accused Cheney and Rumsfeld of jointly leading a "cabal" that hijacked U.S. foreign policy after the 9/11 terrorist attacks against New York and the Pentagon. He charged that the two men, who worked closely together as White House chief of staff and defense secretary, respectively, in the Gerald Ford administration 30 years ago, of circumventing the formal decision-making process in order to get their way.
Wilkerson elaborated on that theme during an interview last week in which he suggested that authorization for harsh treatment of detainees originated with Cheney.
"[T]here was a visible audit trail from the vice president's office through the secretary of defense down to the commanders in the field" authorizing practices that led to the abuse of detainees, he told National Public Radio, adding that Cheney's new chief of staff, David Addington, played a particularly important role.
While that question may appear a bit premature at the moment – speculation about the tenure of President's George W. Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, remains on the front burner – it has loomed over the White House since Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, was indicted 10 days ago.
Libby has been charged with perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with the "outing" of a covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative, whose husband accused the administration of taking the U.S. to war under false pretenses.
But Cheney's fate rests less with whether Libby tells prosecutors that his former boss encouraged him to leak the operative's identity to prominent Washington journalists than with the White House's calculation that the most powerful vice president in U.S.. history has become a serious political liability, both for Bush and for increasingly panicked Republican lawmakers desperate to retain control of Congress in next year's elections.
Cheney's public approval ratings have dropped to an all-time low, according to the most recent Gallup soundings, with a majority of respondents believing that the vice president at least knew about Libby's actions. In his latest National Journal column, public opinion analyst William Schneider asserted that the president now has a "Cheney Problem."
A big part of that problem is Iraq, and particularly Cheney's prewar role as the most aggressive administration official to promote the invasion. With two-thirds of the public now believing that invading Iraq was a mistake, and more than half saying that the administration "deliberately misled the American people" about the reasons for the invasion, Cheney is particularly vulnerable.
According to Newsweek, Cheney's power has already shriveled to virtually nil. It quoted "a senior official sympathetic to Cheney's policies" last week as saying, "You can say that the influence of the vice president is going to decrease, but it's hard to decrease from zero." MORE ON...
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=7948
Last month, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, ret. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, accused Cheney and Rumsfeld of jointly leading a "cabal" that hijacked U.S. foreign policy after the 9/11 terrorist attacks against New York and the Pentagon. He charged that the two men, who worked closely together as White House chief of staff and defense secretary, respectively, in the Gerald Ford administration 30 years ago, of circumventing the formal decision-making process in order to get their way.
Wilkerson elaborated on that theme during an interview last week in which he suggested that authorization for harsh treatment of detainees originated with Cheney.
"[T]here was a visible audit trail from the vice president's office through the secretary of defense down to the commanders in the field" authorizing practices that led to the abuse of detainees, he told National Public Radio, adding that Cheney's new chief of staff, David Addington, played a particularly important role.
posted by professor rat at 5:39 AM
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