WaPo: 'A Different Understanding With the President' (Dick's role)

[babylonsister]

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/chapter_1/

'A Different Understanding With the President'

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By Barton Gellman and Jo Becker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, June 24, 2007; Page A01

Just past the Oval Office, in the private dining room overlooking the South Lawn, Vice President Cheney joined President Bush at a round parquet table they shared once a week. Cheney brought a four-page text, written in strict secrecy by his lawyer. He carried it back out with him after lunch.

In less than an hour, the document traversed a West Wing circuit that gave its words the power of command. It changed hands four times, according to witnesses, with emphatic instructions to bypass staff review. When it returned to the Oval Office, in a blue portfolio embossed with the presidential seal, Bush pulled a felt-tip pen from his pocket and signed without sitting down. Almost no one else had seen the text.

Cheney's proposal had become a military order from the commander in chief. Foreign terrorism suspects held by the United States were stripped of access to any court -- civilian or military, domestic or foreign. They could be confined indefinitely without charges and would be tried, if at all, in closed "military commissions."

"What the hell just happened?" Secretary of State Colin L. Powell demanded, a witness said, when CNN announced the order that evening, Nov. 13, 2001. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, incensed, sent an aide to find out. Even witnesses to the Oval Office signing said they did not know the vice president had played any part.

The episode was a defining moment in Cheney's tenure as the 46th vice president of the United States, a post the Constitution left all but devoid of formal authority. "Angler," as the Secret Service code-named him, has approached the levers of power obliquely, skirting orderly lines of debate he once enforced as chief of staff to President Gerald R. Ford. He has battled a bureaucracy he saw as hostile, using intimate knowledge of its terrain. He has empowered aides to fight above their rank, taking on roles reserved in other times for a White House counsel or national security adviser. And he has found a ready patron in George W. Bush for edge-of-the-envelope views on executive supremacy that previous presidents did not assert.

more...

[cassiepriam]

1. Pretty clear that Rove and Cheney have been in charge of the biggest con game in US history.

[BurtWorm]

2. Recommended.

:grr:

[Solly Mack]

3. Everyone in that WH can pretend Cheney's actions made them mad but

how many of them spoke out? How many of them went public? How many of them tried to stop Cheney? How many of them went along and defended the policies anyway?

So they can all fuck off with their it was all Cheney's doing bullshit.

They ALL did it.

Yes, Cheney is a horrible person and needs to rot away in prison - no doubt about that....but the other people in the WH - to include some of those who have since resigned - need to stop with the bullshit.

They are guilty too.

[KharmaTrain]

4. August, 2000 Was Defining As Well

Do we remember how crashcart became VP? He was "selected" to head junior's panel to find a VP candidate and just couldn't find anyone better than himself to fill the role. That sure set up my red flags and they haven't come down since. That's where the real puppetmasters started coming out. This was the game plan all along...and continues to be.

booooshie was always the figurehead and in 2000 millions were spent to make him "likeable"...the "good cop"...the "guy you wanted to have a beer with". This was the facade...the figurehead to which could be manipulated and would create the distortions and distractions to let the real dirty work go on behind the scenes. And for nearly 6 years, two wars, two major tax hikes and endless signing statements, the game has worked.

There's a change in dynamics now. No way could an article of this scope have been printed a year ago. The corporate media was so intimidated by cheney and his Machiavellian control of power. He really did control the access and could destroy a person's career with a phone call (like the one he tried to make to Russert when Tweety began to ask embarassing questions). The hubris was unprecedented and almost mafia-like, it was assumed those "in the know" would remain silent in fear of the power of the crashcart.

Something's changed...and I'm not sure what it is...just yet. Was it the Libby conviction? The low popularity? The numerous enemies he's surely created within the DOD and CIA? There's an undercurrent going against cheney right now...the curtain is being removed...and what we suspected is turning out to be what it was...and others are starting to see it as well.