The deceased US vice-president Dick Cheney, who died at the age of 84, was regarded as arguably the most influential incumbents of the vice-presidency in US history. While many VPs had to settle for marginal or ceremonial roles, Cheney wielded substantial influence during the presidency of George W Bush, so much so that he was commonly called as the "actual president".
Bush disliked such a characterisation and said the dynamic was more complicated. He observed that Cheney was courteous, always addressing him in official appearances as the President, while he called him as Dick. Bush challenged even descriptions of their association as a team because it suggested that they were peers. Regardless of such protestations, Cheney viewed the easygoing president malleable on a broad range of governmental choices.
A Post-9/11 Era
At the head of a faction of neo-conservatives that included Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been attending a meeting at a educational institution in Florida. As Bush traveled to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took command, commanding the shooting down of any non-communicating planes heading toward the US Capitol.
Cheney stated the attacks transformed him, making him become focused on retribution. Along with other neo-conservatives, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a occupation of Afghanistan in an attempt to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the invasion of Iraq, although there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Disputed Decisions
He voiced no apologies about the armed intervention, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis perished, nor about the enhanced interrogation of individuals captured after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was founded on inaccurate reports echoed by Cheney, was the right path to take. "It represented the proper decision to do at that time. I believed it then and I believe it presently."
However even at the time, there were dissenting voices at a senior level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the White House's own delegates to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the role. "I saw, at a minimum," he wrote later "true dereliction, carelessness, and unaccountability: potentially, deception, ineptitude, and corruption."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not entirely to blame for the Iraq campaign. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for similar measures. He had composed a document setting out scenarios in which US concerns might be endangered (featuring "obtaining crucial commodities, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the United States should be prepared to take unilateral action when cooperative measures cannot be arranged," explicitly mentioning defense operations against Iraq.
Bush too had entered the White House generally inclined on carrying out what his predecessor had notably declined to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. Subsequent to he had been fired by the administration, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his objective of reducing America's engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and suggested military action against Iraq.
Bush held a personal grudge against Saddam, convinced he had been behind a plot to kill his parent, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He also objected to that one of the most prominent accommodations in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his parent's face that all visitors had to tread upon.
Investigation Approaches
Yet it was Cheney who was one of the most vociferous advocating striking Iraq, consistently referencing intelligence reports that were both insubstantial or entirely inaccurate. He endorsed what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "advanced techniques", the employment of waterboarding and torture.
Responding to a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no useful information had come from the harsh techniques, Cheney disregarded the conclusions as "riddled with crap". He stated to Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to take steps and put in place procedures to apprehend the bastards who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it was not repeated. That was specifically what they did and they deserve a lot of recognition."
Public Image
Cheney took pleasure in labels given to him by opponents such as Darth Vader and the dark figure, and by the concept that he was a shadow power manipulating Bush. In the author's 2013 publication about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Do I represent the sinister strategist in the background that nobody ever sees emerge from his domain? That is a effective way to work, actually."
Commercial Ties
Dispute over his business interests accompanied him through his period as vice-president. While he had minimal expertise in business but strong connections in defence, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's biggest energy corporations, in 1995 as chairman and chief executive.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's election partner for the executive branch. Controversially, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was given US agreements valued at billions.
It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly earnings during his time at the firm grew from his $258,394 during his time as defence secretary to $4.4m. When he left in 2000 he had a package totaling over $20m|twenty
