Marvelous, marvelous piece on Dick Cheney by Frank Foer and Spencer Ackerman in the new issue of The New Republic.
I can’t say enough good things about this piece. It not only goes into fascinating detail about the back-and-forth between Cheney’s Office of the Vice President and the CIA over the last two years, it also gives an insightful reading of the evolution of Cheney’s own foreign policy views going back into the mid-1980s, placing that development in a sometimes rightly sympathetic light.
I think I have some quibbles with Foer’s and Ackerman’s judgment about the role of 9/11 as a transformative event for Cheney. But that’s a small difference of opinion, and one I’m going to need to give some more thought to, before I make a final judgment.
But for now this is the piece on Cheney, the intel wars, and Iraq. It convinces me even more of something I’ve thought for some time: that Cheney’s office is a rogue operation in this administration and one with the defining influence.
