Did Americas most powerful Vice-President bully George Bush into war?
TO MEASURE the influence Dick Cheney wields within the White House, it is worth asking whether the United States would have gone to war in Iraq if he had not been Vice-President. The latest book to convulse Washington, Bob Woodward’s 440-page account of the build-up to war, does not pose the question in so many words. But it goes a long way to answering it. It is the third book this year which shines a light into the shadows where Mr Cheney has spent the past three years, hiding from terrorists, avoiding the limelight, yet dominating the Administration. In Plan of Attack, Mr Woodward’s book, some old acquaintances of Mr Cheney identify a sea change in the man over his handling of Iraq. Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, had regarded Mr Cheney as a “cool operator” when they had run the 1991 Gulf War, himself as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Mr Cheney as Defence Secretary. Now he saw Mr Cheney overtaken by “a kind of fever”. “Powell saw in Cheney a sad transformation,” wri
