The late US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was seen as one of the most influential incumbents of the vice-presidency in American history. Whereas numerous vice-presidents were confined to peripheral or figurehead functions, Cheney held enormous power during the term of George W Bush, to the point that he was frequently described as the "true president".
Bush resented such a characterisation and claimed the dynamic was more nuanced. He noted that Cheney was respectful, consistently referring to him in public settings as President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush disputed even descriptions of their relationship as a team because it suggested that they were peers. Despite such protestations, Cheney viewed the easygoing president malleable on a broad range of policy decisions.
A Period Following the Attacks
In charge of a faction of neo-conservatives that included defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been taking part in a session at a elementary school in Florida. While Bush made his way to a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, directing the destruction of any unidentified aircraft nearing the Capitol building.
Cheney claimed the assaults altered his perspective, causing him to be determined on revenge. In conjunction with other conservative figures, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a takeover of Afghanistan in an attempt to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the military action of Iraq, though there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Controversial Actions
He voiced no apologies about the military campaign, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, nor about the waterboarding of detainees captured after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was founded on inaccurate information echoed by Cheney, was the right course of action. "It was the right thing to do at that time. I believed it then and I maintain that stance today."
Yet even then, there were dissenting voices at a top tier about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the administration's own special envoys to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the position. "I saw, as a baseline," he wrote later "clear negligence, inaction, and recklessness: potentially, lying, unfitness, and corruption."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not solely accountable for the Iraq military action. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had composed a memo outlining scenarios in which US concerns might be threatened (including "availability of vital raw materials, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "America should be postured to take unilateral action when collective action prove impossible," explicitly referencing armed actions against Iraq.
Bush additionally had arrived in the presidency somewhat determined on implementing what his predecessor had famously refused to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Subsequent to he had been dismissed by the White House, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his intention of diminishing America's engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mooted defense operations against Iraq.
Bush bore a private grievance against Saddam, believing he had been behind a plot to assassinate his father, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He also objected to that one of the most prominent hotels in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his predecessor's face that everyone had to tread upon.
Investigation Approaches
However it was Cheney who was one of the most vehement behind invading Iraq, frequently quoting agency briefings that were both weak or totally misleading. He endorsed what the Bush government euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the application of simulated drowning and torture.
Responding to a Senate report in 2014 that concluded that no useful information had come from the harsh techniques, Cheney dismissed the report as "riddled with crap". He told Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to establish protocols and create procedures to apprehend the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and ensure it would not recur. That's exactly what they did and they merit a lot of credit."
External Perception
Cheney reveled in monikers assigned to him by detractors such as the dark character and the sinister presence, and by the idea that he was a sinister influence directing Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 volume about the two, 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 operates invisibly come out of his hole? This represents a advantageous way to operate, in fact."
Corporate Connections
Debate over his business interests accompanied him during his tenure as vice-president. Although he had minimal expertise in business but strong connections in security, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's largest energy companies, in 1995 as chair and chief executive.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's running mate for the presidency. Contentiously, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was awarded US contracts totaling billions.
It made him rich. His annual income during his time at the firm rose from his quarter-million dollars during his time as military head to millions. When he left in 2000 he had a severance arrangement valued at more than $20m|twenty
