Ever heard of the diamond cutters of Antwerp, Belgium?

These are guys with an extraordinary amount of experience who have an extraordinarily high-pressure job. They sit in their little workspaces, jewelers' loupes screwed into their eyes, and they transform raw, shapeless diamonds from the mine into gemstones. They "read" the crystalline structure of the diamond, carefully position a chisel over the stone and give the chisel one sharp tap with a mallet.

If they do it exactly right, they split off a portion of the diamond, and are on their way to producing an object of surpassing beauty.

If they're off just a hair, or the angle is wrong by less than a degree, the chisel reduces a stone worth possibly millions into a pile of very expensive gravel, suitable only to coat the edges of drill bits.

I see Dick Cheney as the guy with the mallet, and George W. Bush as the chisel. What gorgeous possibilities could have been coaxed out of the goodwill stemming from 9/11, had they just handled it right.

Anyway, Cheney's big beef now is that George got recalcitrant toward the end, and stopped following directions.

The gall. After all, Cheney chose himself as Bush's vice president after exhaustive research because he knew that he--and only he--had the requisite skills to run the White House and keep Junior in line.

In the past, Cheney condemned administration figures who aired dirty laundry in self-serving books as despicable, but that isn't stopping him now. This is a crusade. George will taste the lash, for sure.

In the meantime, the rest of us can just be content with our pile of gravel.