Is War Breaking Out between Bush and Cheney?

Here's an interesting bit of speculation from Attytood claiming that evidence is surfacing of a major feud between Bush and Cheney, no doubt fueled by the Fitzgerald grand jury investigation and maybe also by finger-pointing on blame for the Iraq disaster.

Since the Fitzgerald investigation has targeted the top adviser to both men (Rove and Libby), it may be that whoever is the most powerful, Bush or Cheney, that person's top man will be indicted. So, today Attytood points to some information that indicates that Rove (Bush's man) has "flipped" and will testify against Cheney, implicating Cheney himself!

For the last few weeks, the most enthralling angle of the whole Valerie Plame-Judy Miller fiasco is whether the probers will work their way up to Vice President Dick Cheney. Miller made it clear that Special Proscecutor Patrick Fitzgerald took an interest in anything that the veep might have known, and when he knew it.
Today, Bloomberg News is reporting that investigators are indeed focused on Cheney:

Fitzgerald has questioned Cheney's communications adviser Catherine Martin and former spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise and ex-White House aide Jim Wilkinson about the vice president's knowledge of the anti-[Joe]Wilson campaign and his dealings on it with ["Scooter"] Libby, his chief of staff, the people said. The information came from multiple sources, who requested anonymity because of the secrecy and political sensitivity of the investigation.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who has now testified twice before a federal grand jury probing the case after spending 85 days in jail for refusing to cooperate with Fitzgerald, wrote in yesterday's New York Times that Fitzgerald asked her whether the vice president ``had known what his chief aide,'' Libby, "was doing and saying'' regarding Wilson, a critic of the war in Iraq.

Of course, Cheney was the driving force behind the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, the little-publicized team that carried out the PR offensive on invading Iraq. Thus, it's quite possible that Fitzgerald is looking at a broad conspiracy among WHIG members to discredit war-whistleblower Wilson, Plame's husband. Libby, after all, is Cheney's top aide, so any push to discredit Wilson and to leak Plame's name may have come from the boss.

Of course, Bush junior is probably not strong enough to stand up to Cheney, but Bush senior is, and there is a history of bad blood between the two after Cheney, Bush I's Defense Secretary during the first Iraq War, allied himself with the Neocons who criticized Bush I for not invading Baghdad in 1991.

Bush I has never really liked the Neocons (or Israel, for that matter) much. Clearly his son badly needs a scapegoat, and Cheney and the Neocons would make a good one.

Another possibility is that the non-Neocon factions in the ruling class want to get rid of both Bush and Cheney, but know they have to get rid of Cheney first, since if they impeach Bush first, then Cheney will become president. Wishful thinking, perhaps.

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