CHENEY IN CHARGE

Many people suspect that VP Cheney actually runs things in this Administration. Paul O'Neill, formerly Secretary of the Treasury, felt that Cheney had cut off the President from all but a very narrow circle of insiders and thus prevented Fredo from getting disinterested opinions. Larry Wilkerson, formerly Colin Powell's chief of staff at the State Department, felt that Cheney and Rumsfeld effectively short-circuited the normal deliberative process about national security issues.

Now, we have a little more evidence that Cheney has an enormous amount of power, this time from the former British Defence Minister.

Hoon admits fatal errors in planning for postwar Iraq
Patrick Wintour, political editor
Wednesday May 2, 2007
The Guardian

(excerpts)

Mr Hoon also said he and other senior ministers completely underestimated the role and influence of the vice-president, Dick Cheney.

"Sometimes ... Tony had made his point with the president, and I'd made my point with Don [Rumsfeld] and Jack [Straw] had made his point with Colin [Powell] and the decision actually came out of a completely different place. And you think: what did we miss? I think we missed Cheney."

Describing the task of dealing with the US administration as a "multi-dimensional jigsaw puzzle," Mr Hoon accepted that Britain had greatly underestimated the influence of the neo-con vice-president Mr Cheney and had lacked a comparable figure able to engage him regularly over the war. And he admitted that as Mr Powell became more marginalised by the White House and Mr Rumsfeld's Pentagon, Britain's coordination of its position through his state department left its influence greatly diminished.