Cheney's role, real and imagined, in managing U.S. policy in Iraq earned him the title of most powerful vice president in U.S. history. Now his successor, Joe Biden, has been officially handed handed the Iraq portfolio and with it responsibility for a theater of operations that is host to two to three times as many U.S. troops as Afghanistan. Yet no one imagines him to be a particularly powerful vice president. If anything, Biden taking the "lead role" in Iraq only seems to confirm that this administration is about as concerned with events in that country as it is with preventing fraud in the stimulus spending -- one of Biden's other responsibilities.