Cheney’s Tell-All Book to Take a Shot at Bush for Softening Up

Seen at the guardian (UK)

The former vice-president, Dick Cheney, grew increasingly disenchanted with George Bush in the latter’s second term as president, believing his boss was going soft in the so-called war on terror, it emerged today.

What emerged from the latest account of Cheney’s disgruntlement was that the former vice-president thought Bush had gone soft in the last years of his presidency as he veered away from the “you are with us or you are against us” approach following the September 11 attacks in 2001.

In the last days of his administration, Bush halted the waterboarding of terrorist suspects, closed secret CIA prisons, sought congressional approval for domestic surveillance, and put out feelers to Iran and North Korea, governments he previously denounced as part of the “axis of evil”.

According to those who have been speaking to the former vice-president, the shift stuck in Cheney’s craw.

The first inkling of Cheney’s disenchantment with Bush came in a long account in Time magazine of his failed attempt to win a presidential pardon for his aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Despite much badgering from Cheney, Bush refused a pardon for Libby, who was convicted in 2007 of perjury and the obstruction of an investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame, a CIA agent.