A Washington Post story containing critical quotes from administration sources paints a picture of Vice President Dick Cheney as adamant on defending controversial U.S. practices regarding detainees — and it suggests his standing within the administration is shakier than ever.
If this had been a news story published in the time when Francisco Franco was dictator of Spain or Stalin were dictator of the Soviet Union, it’d raise eyebrows because people trying to learn the nuances of closed-administration policies would note that the sourcing is clearly from within high levels of the administration — well-connected sources taking Cheney to task and suggesting he is the champion of practices such as torture.
It can mean one of several things (or a combination of several):
- Discipline in the usually-disciplined Bush administration has broken down so much now that they allowed a story basically glorifying Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and sandbagging Dick Cheney to get into the Washington Post.
- It was calculated to clip Cheney’s wings (or, some critics would say, horns) so that he has less power within the administration for the next three years.
- He’s being positioned as the key person to blame in Plamegate with the Prez likely being painted in a “I had no idea” kind of light.
- Cheney’s in serious trouble and all the pure speculation that we could get an announcement about him leaving for health reasons may one day prove accurate.
One thing is for certain. This story starts to try to put as much distance between the Oval Office and Dick Cheney as New Delhi and Oriskiny Falls, New York:
Over the past year, Vice President Cheney has waged an intense and largely unpublicized campaign to stop Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department from imposing more restrictive rules on the handling of terrorist suspects, according to defense, state, intelligence and congressional officials….
….In recent months, Cheney has been the force against adding safeguards to the Defense Department’s rules on treatment of military prisoners, putting him at odds with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon R. England. On a trip to Canada last month, Rice interrupted a packed itinerary to hold a secure video-teleconference with Cheney on detainee policy to make sure no decisions were made without her input.
Just last week, Cheney showed up at a Republican senatorial luncheon to lobby lawmakers for a CIA exemption to an amendment by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that would ban torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners. The exemption would cover the CIA’s covert “black sites” in several Eastern European democracies and other countries where key al Qaeda captives are being kept.
Then you read the Cheney spokesman insisting, in effect, that Cheney is reflective of the administration policy.
Cheney spokesman Steve Schmidt declined to comment on the vice president’s interventions or to elaborate on his positions. “The vice president’s views are certainly reflected in the administration’s policy,” he said.
Attention Dick Cheney: if you think you are the Bush administration just remember how Aaron Brown thought he was CNN? (Has Anderson Cooper been seen hanging around GWB lately? Uh, oh…) And here’s the KISS OF DEATH QUOTE:
Increasingly, however, Cheney’s positions are being opposed by other administration officials, including Cabinet members, political appointees and Republican lawmakers who once stood firmly behind the administration on all matters concerning terrorism.
Personnel changes in President Bush’s second term have added to the isolation of Cheney, who previously had been able to prevail in part because other key parties to the debate — including Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and White House counsel Harriet Miers — continued to sit on the fence.
It then goes into how others are becoming assertive…and here is the COUP DE GRACE:
Cheney’s camp is a “shrinking island,” said one State Department official who, like other administration officials quoted in this article, asked not to be identified because public dissent is strongly discouraged by the White House.
So what does this mean for the future?
It means that Cheney’s island is shrinking because now Scooter Libby isn’t around to run up to him and scream “Boss! Da plane! Da plane!” At BEST all this means Cheney’s influence will wane and he’ll be like many other Vice Presidents — a great guy to send to funerals. At WORST this could be the first step in hurling Cheney overboard since the fragile ship has sprung a leak – it might help to put some distance between him and The Boss.
And Bush? No matter what happens, what all this suggests is a turbulent, weakened remaining three years. Theoretically, if Cheney goes and he replaces him with someone surprising and dynamic (Rudy Giuliani, John McCain) or history-making (Condi Rice) it’ll give him some more breathing space between crises and demands for investigations.
If Cheney and Karl Rove go, the dynamics at the White House will clearly change and it can hardly be spun that the Bush Presidency was a successful, popular or corruption-free one. But some will try.
And if Cheney stays? Incredibly weakened.