All Cheney can do is talk

Dick Cheney's hawkish circle that once had enormous influence on Bush's foreign policy has been diminished.  Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Bolton, Scooter Libby, and Donald Rumsfeld are all gone.  We are watching the lessening of Cheney's influence before our very eyes.  Just days after Dick Cheney took a hard-line approach on Iran, American officials have agreed to high-level negotiations with Iran and Syria, which will take place at a regional conference on Iraq:

The discussions, scheduled for the next two months, are expected to include Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Iranian and Syrian counterparts.

Theannouncement, first made in Baghdad and confirmed by Ms. Rice, that theUnited States would take part in two sets of meetings among Iraq andits neighbors, including Syria  and Iran , is a shift in President Bush’s avoidance of high-level contacts with the governments in Damascus and, especially, Tehran.

We will probably never seen Bush and Ahmadinejad in a room together -- so don't get your hopes up.  Though, this definitely is a start.  It shows that the State Department and the post-Rumsfeld Pentagon are moving in a more realistic direction, even though it is taking them a long time to do so.

Bottom line: the most damage Cheney can do is with his mouth.  In terms of his influence, he is definitely a lame duck without anything to do other than voice threats.  New Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has obviously helped shift power away from Cheney.  Even Joshua Bolton, Bush's Chief of Staff, is more influential than Cheney at this very moment.  Compared to the situation when Andrew Card was in there, a lot has changed.