Reply #5: You know, that's a puzzle.

[BurtWorm]

I do believe Bush is a puppet, and I used to think Cheney was the puppetmaster when it came to the actual work of the administration. Now I'm not so sure. According to Woodward, Cheney seems kind of like a single-minded fool, someone who actually believed that al Qaeda and Saddam were in cahoots on 9-11. Then again, why believe Woodward?

What really seems to be happening is Iraq writ small: the administration is a loosely held together assemblage of warring cliques. No one's completely in charge. Or rather, now Rove might be in charge, now Cheney, now someone else trying to pick up the pieces the others dropped and broke. And the thing holding them all together is the mission of keeping Bush jr. thinking he's the boss.