to deal with. do you think you have changed since you have been in this administration? have i changed? well, i hear that from time to time from old frens who say, gee, what happened to the old dick cheney i used to know? and people twho don t sort of walk in my shoes don t sit down every morning and go through the intelligence reports with the president, chido. so you don t mind the characterizations? no. i am not here to polish my image by any means. i am here to do a job. that job was getting tougher every day. it was bad enough that u.s. troops did not find weapons of mass destruction in iraq. even worse, a bloody terrorist insurgency began killing americans by the day. even one of cheney s old friends joined the ranks of his critics. i never suspected that the occupation would be so incompetent. i was really dashed with that. i just couldn t stand the thought myself that people are