Elder Bush Lashes Out at Cheney and Rumsfeld

“After years of holding back, former President George Bush has finally broken his public silence about some of the key figures in his son’s administration, issuing scathing critiques of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,” the New York Times reports.

In interviews with his biographer, Bush said that Cheney had built “his own empire” and asserted too much “hard-line” influence within George W. Bush’s White House in pushing for the use of force around the world. Rumsfeld, the elder Bush said, was an “arrogant fellow” who could not see how others thought and “served the president badly.”

The biography, Destiny and Power by Jon Meacham comes out next week.