Darth Cheney, pt 2
he Washington Post is running a series of articles about Dick Cheney, this week. The first one appeared this morning: ‘A Different Understanding With the President’:
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.
Wash your morning Wheaties down with a bottle of Maalox and go for a read. And consider, while you do so, that there was enough material available to make this a four-part series.
(Photo credit: Britannica.com.)
June 28th, 2007 at 9:33 am
hey you chabged the layout!!
JavaElemental Reply:
June 28th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Yeah, I had to. When I went to upgrade to the newest version of WordPress, it broke my old layout — I was going to have to completely re-do it. I figured that, since I was going to have to re-do the whole thing from scratch, I might as well look around for a new template, too. This is what I ended up with. Like it?