“Mr. Cheney’s nickname inside the C.I.A. was Edgar (as in Edgar Bergen)...”

"… casting Mr. Bush in the puppet role of Charlie McCarthy." Ron Suskind has written a new book, "The One Percent Doctrine," reports Michiko Kakutani for the NY Times, wherein he "cites one instance after another in which the president was not fully briefed (or had failed to read the basic paperwork) about a crucial situation." … Keeping information away from the president, Mr. Suskind argues, was a calculated White House strategy that gave Mr. Bush "plausible deniability" from Mr. Cheney's point of view, and that perfectly meshed with the commander in chief's own impatience with policy details. Suggesting that Mr. Bush deliberately did not read the full National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which was delivered to the White House in the fall of 2002, Mr. Suskind writes: "Keeping certain knowledge from Bush — much of it shrouded, as well, by classification — meant that the president, whose each word circles the globe, could advance various strategies by saying whatever was needed. He could essentially be 'deniable' about his own statements." "Whether Cheney's innovations were tailored to match Bush's inclinations, or vice versa, is almost immaterial," Mr. Suskind continues. "It was a firm fit. Under this strategic model, reading the entire N.I.E. would be problematic for Bush: it could hem in the president's rhetoric, a key weapon in the march to war. He would know too much." --- Kakutani doesn't mention that Cheney appointed himself as Bush's VP choice in 2000, after he conveniently discarded all other candidate prospects in his roll as casting director for the VP slot. (via Mike Diehl) update: Josh Marshall has pulled a passage from Bart Gellman's review of Suskind's book in today's Post. Try not to lose your lunch when you read it. George Bush insisted on torturing a certifiably insane man, for his pathetic fear of losing "face." And "Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety -- against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each … target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."