Washington, Nov 5 (EFE).– Former President George H.W. Bush harshly criticizes Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld – both of whom were key officials during the 2001-2009 presidency of his son, George W. Bush – in a new biography, Fox News reported.

The conservative news network released excerpts from Jon Meacham’s book “Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush,” due out later this month.

In an unexpected turn of events, given that Bush senior, 91, has always maintained a very respectful tone when speaking of the presidencies of his successors, on this occasion he says that his son’s close advisers – former Vice President Cheney and former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld – “served the president (Bush junior) badly.”

The former president said Cheney was very different as vice president from when he served as defense secretary under the elder Bush during Operation Desert Storm.

“He just became very hard-line and very different from the Dick Cheney I knew and worked with,” Bush told Meacham “Just iron-ass. His seeming knuckling under to the real hard-charging guys who want to fight about everything, use force to get our way in the Middle East … (He) had his own empire and marched to his own drummer.”

“The big mistake that was made was letting Cheney bring in kind of his own State Department,” Bush told Meacham, going on to say: “But it’s not Cheney’s fault. It’s the president’s fault. The buck stops there.”

Regarding Rumsfeld, Bush senior characterized him as “an arrogant fellow.”

“I think he served the president badly,” Bush reportedly told Meacham, adding that “I’ve never been that close to him anyway. There’s a lack of humility, a lack of seeing what the other guy thinks. He’s more kick ass and take names, take numbers. I think he paid a price for that.”

Rumsfeld resigned as Pentagon chief 2006 after the situation in Iraq deteriorated.

In contrast to Cheney, Rumsfeld did not hold a top position in the elder Bush’s 1989-1993 administration, but during Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford’s presidencies he served as ambassador to NATO, White House chief of staff and defense secretary for the first time. EFE