Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s memoir In My Time* has earned strong rebuttals and bitter sound bites in its first weeks of publication. Oddly, most anger so far has been voiced by former colleagues in the George W. Bush administration or in the Republican Congress—especially by former Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and once presidential candidate Senator John McCain—who feel that Cheney either has not accurately recorded their private conversations and meetings, or, if he were roughly accurate, was too indiscreet in publishing accounts of them.

The supposedly controversial Cheney memoir is not as provocative as the media hype accompanying its initial release; most controversies focus on just two chapters concerning the response to 9/11 and the Korean nuclear crisis, where he is at odds with both of Bush’s Secretaries of State.

Cheney chides Powell on two grounds. First, Powell allegedly danced about with the liberal press during the hysteria that arose over Iraq, using backdoor media channels to distance himself from an increasing unpopular and demonized administration while putting on an official face of consent and harmony. Second, Powell did not promptly step forward to insist to the Special Prosecutor or to President Bush that his own subordinate, Richard Armitage, had probably first revealed to reporters the CIA associations of Valerie Plame.

Continue reading Victor Davis Hanson…

(photo credit: Gage Skidmore)

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