Fascinating new bio of Cheney

Terry Gross on Fresh Air interviewed journalist Barton Gellman about Angler: the Cheney Vice Presidency. This new book was based on a Pulitzer-prize winning series of articles about Cheney that Gellman wrote with Jo Becker in 2007.

Ahh.... Someday when I get around to doing my epic film octology of the worst presidents ever, there will be a place on my shelf for... The Angler!

Is that supposed to be some kind of fishing reference, by the way? Because the touchstones for Angler are full of fishing books.

I think it's designed to make the book a bit more a-lure-ing.....

Not to discontinue this punacious discussion, but I thought it meant someone who plays all the angles.

Angler apparently is Cheney's secret service codename. Gellman was on the Daily Show a couple nights ago. One of his tales concerned a meeting between Cheney and former GOP House majority leader Dick Armey. Armey--a very blunt and outspoken congressman with impeccable conservative credentials--was dead set against the March 2003 Iraq invasion plans. Cheney had him come to some secret office of his and convinced him that 1) there were strong links between Saddam's Iraq govt. and Al Quaeda. 2) they were perfecting miniaturized nuclear devices such as could be carried in a suitcase or a backpack. Armey capitulated. According to Gellman--he was near tears on the floor of the house when he voted to give the president authority to take whatever action he saw fit. Armey agreed to be interviewed and apparently consented to Gellman putting this story in his book. Apparently he also is still very angry about being lied to by his party's VP.

>5 lriley: Angler apparently is Cheney's secret service codename.

Not "Sharpshooter"?

Harper's interview with the author here.

It shows you how far we've come as a nation. Woodward and Bernstein could have written this book and it wouldn't have made it interesting enough to get people to stop texting each other about the season premiere of Grey's Anatomy (is that THIS week or NEXT?)

#6 sharpshooter would seem to work as well but I'm guessing after that 'accident' they just didn't feel like changing it.

>7 Jesse_wiedinmyer: Wow! That Cheney would let Bush sign off on warrantless domestic surveillance without telling him of Justice lawyers' objections! To get what he wanted, Cheney would leave his boss out there hanging?

..."(Cheney) simply believed that the stakes were high and he was more capable than others. He saw the world, he believed, as it truly is and was prepared to do the “unpleasant” things that had to be done to safeguard us. Cheney is a rare combination: a zealot in principle and a subtle, skillful tactician in practice."...

Isn't Cheney an elitist? The quote from margd in #10, ". . . he (Cheney) was more capable than others. He saw the world, he believed, as it truly is. . ." sounds like a classic definition of an elitist. I see things with more insight, understanding and clarity than you, so I'm going to do what must be done. It seems to me that pretty much fills the definition of an elitist.

Another example of the Republicans demonizing a type of behavior as a smokescreen obscuring this same behavior in themselves. Disgusting.

It's the lies I hate. Masters of the World can do whatever they deem necessary, the rest of us just aren't immoral enough to do what's "necessary". I would suggest that immorality is NEVER the right choice.