The Post is running a multi-part series on Cheney's legacy:

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. ...

One thing I've been puzzling over is the lack of commentary or reporting on the fact that even with these unprecedented secret extra-legal powers he has seized for himself and the White House, Cheney has been so singularly unsuccessful on any of the national security fronts he in effect commands. His failures in Iraq, his failures to finish bin Laden and al Qaeda in a serious way in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the exponential growth of terrorism and al Qaeda in Iraq. These are facts. There are urgent, deeply compelling legal/philosophical/Constitutional issues raised by Cheney's actions and those of his enablers and committed ideological collaborators. But what about the measures of his performance?

Posted by Laura at June 23, 2007 10:45 PM