"Almost No One" Had Seen Draft OF MCA-Cheney-Insured No Objections Would Reach Bush-

[kpete]

According to the article, Cheney used that influence to bypass key presidential aides and thwart any dissent about Bush’s authorization of the unconstitutional military commissions to try detainees. The Post reports “almost no one” had seen the legal draft establishing the commissions, except Cheney’s closest aides. Cheney then took astonishing measures to ensure that internal objections would not reach the President, even resorting to spying on White House staff
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/06/24/cheney-wp-profile/

The Post is running a multi-part series on Cheney's legacy:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/

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. ...

Waxing or waning, Cheney holds his purchase on an unrivaled portfolio across the executive branch. Bush works most naturally, close observers said, at the level of broad objectives, broadly declared. Cheney, they said, inhabits an operational world in which means are matched with ends and some of the most important choices are made. When particulars rise to presidential notice, Cheney often steers the preparation of options and sits with Bush, in side-by-side wing chairs, as he is briefed. ...

The world is full of examples of powerful people who think they are exempt from the laws because of some self justifying logic. But too bad for us tough guy Cheney with his impassioned commitment to torture and secret power couldn't get bin Laden and failed to win the war in Iraq with his friend Rumsfeld. His sense of a higher purpose that justified circumventing the law and the deliberative process is totally divorced from the simple reality of the total ineptness of the administration's service to America from Katrina to Iraq to its failure to get bin Laden and finish al Qaeda. We didn't get a better policy because Cheney thought he knew better and was hostile to process, we got failed one after failed one after failed one. Even with all that secret extra-legal power he yielded and bestowed for all these years, he couldn't show success on any front when it mattered.

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/006335.html

[leveymg]

1. Cheney's failure was that his approach excluded those who had to carry it out

It's a well-known principle in politics and organizational theory that major changes can not be imposed from the top down unless there is a consensus at all levels that these changes, particularly ones requiring sacrifice, are desirable.

Furthermore, the middle-managers must be allowed enough decision-making power so as to be able to take "policy ownership." Large organizations can not be effectively run from the top, even with the help of a committed cadre of loyal appointees. In the end, it is the people on the ground who take the actions that determine success or failure.

Cheney, because of his dictatorial and secretive nature, ignored that. The predictable result was failure in the face of any determined opposition, to a large extent because of resistance from within the organizations he commanded. He did not get the best from the people he had, and drove off the best people.

If Cheney and Bush had been in the White House during World War Two, we might well have lost that war, too.

The Bush-Cheney Administration has proven an social important principle. Would-be Dictators fail, particularly when they try to lead democratic societies.