George Bush Sr launches scathing criticism of son's senior aides and says Dubya's tone was 'hostile'

While George HW Bush praises his son, he says he overly empowered senior aides

Mr Bush kept his silence for years (EPA)

It was always clear that while President George HW Bush loved his eldest son, he was not always entirely impressed with the people he surrounded himself with.

And while the Mr Bush the father adopted a more traditional brand of Republicanism and a foreign policy centred on pragmatism, his son listened to the neocon voices around him and led an invasion of Iraq.

Now, the 41st US president has voiced his exasperation and frustration, issuing a scathing criticism of Defence Secretary Dick Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney has been highly critical of Pope Francis (Getty Images)

In interviews for a new biography of the now 91-year-old said that Mr Cheney had built “his own empire” and asserted too much “hard-line” influence. He said Mr Rumsfeld was an “arrogant fellow” who could not see how others thought and “served the president badly.”

In his comments to John Meacham, for a book to be published next week by Random House and detailed in the New York Times, Mr Bush also expresses some criticism of his son, saying that he allowed himself to empower the two others, and that he at times adopted a tone that was hostile and aggressive.

“I do worry about some of the rhetoric that was out there - some of it his, maybe, and some of it the people around him,” Mr Bush told Mr Meacham.

Donald Rumsfeld was made aware of the CIA interrogation programme prior to recertification of the covert action for the first time in a 25-minute briefing on 16 September, 2003. It was Condoleezza Rice who ordered his briefing. (Getty)

“Hot rhetoric is pretty easy to get headlines, but it doesn’t necessarily solve the diplomatic problem.”

Mr Bush’s comments in Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, also give voice to sentiments that many long suspected he had harbored - and which were sometimes leaked by those close to him during his son’s presidency- but until now kept largely private.

The criticism of Mr Cheney is all the more telling given that he served as his Defence Secretary. Of Mr Cheney, he said: “He just became very hard-line and very different from the Dick Cheney I knew and worked with.”

Mr Bush said he believed the attacks of 9/11 triggered a fundamental change in the vice president, making him more hawkish about the use of US military force abroad.

“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 said.

Of Mr Rumsfeld, he said: "I think he served the president badly. I don't like what he did, and I think it hurt the president having his iron-ass view of everything."