The cascade of information about the runup to the Iraq invasion is turning into a waterfall as it is joined by commentaries and editorials. The consensus is becoming: Cheney has dominated a weak Bush to the extent that foreign policy is breaking down as Cheney becomes more of a target. However, if blaming Cheney for being the "Dark Side" is how Bush plans to save his reputation, he can save his breath, because he himself brings nothing to the table.
Links below the jump.
Is Bush attempting to put some distance between himself and Cheney? Where are all these unsubtle portraits of Cheney as the Dark Lord coming from - yes, I know, we here have always known this, but the repetitive nature of these talking points have Republican fingerprints on them.
Yesterday's savage Boston Globe op-ed by James Carroll, Deconstructing Cheney, referenced in yesterday's Daily Kos, sounded a historical judgement on how much damage one man could do, even in a democracy, even in the United States of America.
Slate's "President Cheney," posted yesterday by Daniel Benjamin points the way for historians to begin examining Cheney's "grip on power." It throws out some hints about a "Cheney-Rumsfield" locus of power which presumably bears the greatest responsibility for the Iraq invasion.
But today's lead NY Times editorial, Bush's Walkabout, shows the impossibility of Bush's reinventing his administration: "But the central problem is not Karl Rove or Treasury Secretary John Snow or even Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary. It is President Bush himself." It references the Bush (and Rice) trip to the Latin American summit which has ended in a flaming failure (another one) for the Bush agenda.
Bush's problem isn't that there is a dark force (whenever I hear this term it makes me wonder if Cheney didn't erase those 18 minutes of Nixon tapes!) exerting undue influence over his better impulses. His whole administration is made up of people like Cheney, people who have exhibited no better impulses, people who are incompetent.
The failure of Bush foreign policy at the Latin American summit indicates how interconnected Bush's advisors - and Bush - all are. They cannot get out. Rice has made her career out of amplifying whatever Bush was saying at the moment. She doesn't have any answers.
Let's just hope we can get a Democratic majority next year and begin to get some sunlight and some competence back in our government.
The Latin American summit signals the future for the Bush administration. They will sit through the next three years and reap what they have sown. I am sorry that we all have to go through it with them.