We were deep into 2002, probably five or six months after 9/11, before my editor would even entertain the idea of my drawing a cartoon that did not portray George W. Bush in anything but a favorable light.

"We're not ready for that yet," I remember him saying. He was probably right, as far as the sentiments of our readers were concerned.

The terror was still fresh, the country had rallied around its president, and unbeknownst to us, Dick Cheney was quietly machinating behind the scenes to exploit our national myopia and expand executive power to unheard-of levels.

It was a failure on the part of the media as much as anyone else, but consumers of news weren't ready yet for hard-nosed reporting, or commenting for that matter, about our leaders.

These are different times, and the man who used to condemn the Bush naysayers as unpatriotic didn't even wait for the inaugural platform to be disassembled before he began loudly trashing the new president. It's his right. Too bad he didn't see it that way when he was on the receiving end.

As for setting himself up as the world's authority on keeping us safe, let's remember that clever locution Cheney and his supporters like to use to justify their excesses: "The terrorists haven't hit us again since 9/11."

As I recall, Dick Cheney had been running this country for almost eight months when the terrorists did hit us on 9/11.

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You can “look forward, not back,” as President Obama says he is doing in distancing himself from his “rogue” attorney general, Eric Holder.

This, of course, is an adroit little sidestep. After all, Obama’s the one who nominated the guy. Holder, as a member of Obama’s cabinet, serves at his pleasure. I guess this kind of waffling is what they call “leadership.”

Anyway, an investigation of alleged illegal acts is probably a good thing for the republic. Obama has made it clear that those who were only following orders will not be prosecuted (that argument didn’t fly when it was made with a German accent, but this is the national security of the American homeland we’re talking about now, folks).

That leaves…whom? Probably nobody, because going after the principals of the Bush administration who set the policy would distract everyone from Obama’s priorities, not to mention possibly derail his presidency.

In any case, if we don’t at least examine the excesses of our behavior and do a little public self-reflection, then our already-battered worldwide reputation as a nation of laws will suffer even further.

And the terrorists—while not exactly winning—will have achieved a tactical victory in the battle for hearts and minds.

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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.

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A strange thing about Dick Cheney (OK, another strange thing about Dick Cheney), is that when he was in public service, he went to enormous lengths to keep everything private.

Now that he's a private citizen, he's trying to make everything public, to the point of declassifying documents that would prove torturing prisoners made the country safer.

Then there's this so-called "battle for the soul of the Republican Party," which is a lot like arguing over how many angels can fit on the head of a pin, since nobody can really prove that the Republican Party has a soul in the first place. Or, if it once had a soul, maybe it sold it to Dick Cheney.

Cheney's condemnation of a truly heroic public servant, Colin Powell, as not being a "real Republican," says more about what has happened to the Grand Old Party of Lincoln, Rockefeller, Goldwater and Reagan than about Powell.

The only member of the former administration who seems to have distinguished himself in the post-Bush period is W. himself, and he has done so by wisely keeping his mouth shut (unless he's in front of wealthy foreigners, who pay him to open it).

Cheney could learn a little something from his former junior partner.

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