A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

Americans were reminded of our hatred of the Vice-President after his bizarrely combative exchange [1] with Wolf Blitzer in an interview the other day. Blitzer, hardly a liberal, gave Cheney fair but challenging questions which were met with hostile responses and non-responses.

Even Republican's think he's getting "a little strange." [2]

Donald Rumsfeld faded disgracefully away into the background (well, sort of [3]), but Cheney is stuck in the spotlight for another two years (barring, perhaps, another heart attack or two giving him a reason to leave). And his problems just don't seem to be going away. Bush has been taking most of the fall for the new Iraq escalation plans, but Cheney is still taking heat [4] for his role in the initial invasion.

The new Senate Intelligence Chair, Jay Rockefeller, is now claiming [5] that Cheney exerted "constant" pressure on his predecessor to stall investigations into the use of flawed intelligence. Republicans are denying it of course, but the allegations don't help, especially considering that Rockefeller is presumably intending to right the past wrongs and use his power to thoroughly investigate the administration. And that's bad news for Dick Cheney because he certainly knows what might turn up (including things we might not even know yet).

The Libby leak case is going even worse. Conventional wisdom predicted that Cheney's old chief of staff would take the blame for disclosing a CIA operative's identity and get a pardon before Bush leaves office. However, Scooter Libby is doing the opposite and blaming everyone else instead. There has already been some fun testimony [6] from various officials implicating both Libby and Cheney. So far it's all "Veep-said, she said" but with any luck enough will come out to give Cheney his very own trial for obstruction of justice, if not more.

By deciding not to run for president, Cheney was probably hoping to cut his losses and salvage as much of his legacy as possible from his many decades in politics. Unfortunately for him, he can't escape his actions over the past six years. If the Libby trial and Iraq intel investigations follow their due course, expect many more entertaining interviews like the Wolf Blitzer one before his term is up.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

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