Leaving Regrets to Others, Cheney Speaks
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
NYT Book Review Section
IN MY TIME
A Personal and Political Memoir
By Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney
Illustrated. 565 pages. Threshold Editions. $35.
In an interview on NBC’s “Dateline,” former Vice President Dick Cheney says that his new book, “In My Time,” will have “heads exploding all over Washington.” Whatever readers think of Mr. Cheney’s politics, their heads are more likely to explode from frustration than from any sense of revelation. Indeed, the memoir — delivered in dry, often truculent prose — turns out to be mostly a predictable mix of spin, stonewalling, score settling and highly selective reminiscences.
The book, written with his daughter Liz, reiterates Mr. Cheney’s aggressive approach to foreign policy and his hard-line views on national security, while sidestepping questions about many of the Bush administration’s more controversial decisions, either by cherry-picking information (much the way critics say the White House cherry-picked intelligence in making the case to go to war against Iraq) or by hopping and skipping over awkward subjects with loudly voiced assertions. It’s ironic that Mr. Cheney — who succeeded in promulgating so many of his policy ideas through his sheer mastery of bureaucratic detail — should have written a book that is often so lacking in detail that it feels like a blurred photograph.
Mr. Cheney writes that “the liberation of Iraq” was “one of the most significant accomplishments of George Bush’s presidency” — never mind the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction that were cited as a chief reason for the invasion, or a botched occupation that allowed an insurgency to metastasize for years. He describes Guantánamo as “a model facility — safe, secure, and humane” and writes that the C.I.A.’s program of “enhanced interrogation techniques” was “safe, legal, and effective.” As for Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Cheney praises President Bush for “personally” dedicating “hundreds of hours not only to ensuring an effective federal response but to reaching out to people who needed to know that their government cared about them.”
The famously tight-lipped Mr. Cheney does serve up some interesting tidbits in these pages. We learn that the “undisclosed locations” at which he spent so much time were often Camp David or the vice president’s residence; that he wrote a letter of resignation dated March 28, 2001, and told an aide to give it to the president were he ever to suffer a heart attack or stroke that left him incapacitated; and that he spent several weeks unconscious in 2010 after heart surgery.
(More here.)
NYT Book Review Section
IN MY TIME
A Personal and Political Memoir
By Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney
Illustrated. 565 pages. Threshold Editions. $35.
In an interview on NBC’s “Dateline,” former Vice President Dick Cheney says that his new book, “In My Time,” will have “heads exploding all over Washington.” Whatever readers think of Mr. Cheney’s politics, their heads are more likely to explode from frustration than from any sense of revelation. Indeed, the memoir — delivered in dry, often truculent prose — turns out to be mostly a predictable mix of spin, stonewalling, score settling and highly selective reminiscences.
The book, written with his daughter Liz, reiterates Mr. Cheney’s aggressive approach to foreign policy and his hard-line views on national security, while sidestepping questions about many of the Bush administration’s more controversial decisions, either by cherry-picking information (much the way critics say the White House cherry-picked intelligence in making the case to go to war against Iraq) or by hopping and skipping over awkward subjects with loudly voiced assertions. It’s ironic that Mr. Cheney — who succeeded in promulgating so many of his policy ideas through his sheer mastery of bureaucratic detail — should have written a book that is often so lacking in detail that it feels like a blurred photograph.
Mr. Cheney writes that “the liberation of Iraq” was “one of the most significant accomplishments of George Bush’s presidency” — never mind the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction that were cited as a chief reason for the invasion, or a botched occupation that allowed an insurgency to metastasize for years. He describes Guantánamo as “a model facility — safe, secure, and humane” and writes that the C.I.A.’s program of “enhanced interrogation techniques” was “safe, legal, and effective.” As for Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Cheney praises President Bush for “personally” dedicating “hundreds of hours not only to ensuring an effective federal response but to reaching out to people who needed to know that their government cared about them.”
The famously tight-lipped Mr. Cheney does serve up some interesting tidbits in these pages. We learn that the “undisclosed locations” at which he spent so much time were often Camp David or the vice president’s residence; that he wrote a letter of resignation dated March 28, 2001, and told an aide to give it to the president were he ever to suffer a heart attack or stroke that left him incapacitated; and that he spent several weeks unconscious in 2010 after heart surgery.
(More here.)
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