The late US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at the age of 84, was seen as arguably the most powerful incumbents of the vice-presidency in US history. While numerous VPs were confined to minor or figurehead functions, Cheney exercised huge power during the administration of George W Bush, to the point that he was frequently called as the "true president".
Bush objected to such a characterisation and stated the connection was more complicated. He observed that Cheney was deferential, consistently addressing him in public settings as Mr President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush challenged even characterisations of their relationship as a team because it suggested that they were peers. In spite of these objections, Cheney found the easygoing president accommodating on a broad range of governmental choices.
The Post-9/11 Era
At the head of a contingent of neo-conservatives that included military head Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been taking part in a gathering at a educational institution in Florida. Whereas Bush traveled to a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, directing the shooting down of any unresponsive airplanes approaching the US Capitol.
Cheney claimed the attacks transformed him, causing him to be determined on retribution. Along with other neo-cons, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a invasion of Afghanistan in an endeavor to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the invasion of Iraq, though there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Controversial Policies
He showed no remorse about the armed intervention, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis perished, or about the waterboarding of detainees apprehended after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was founded on faulty reports echoed by Cheney, was the correct decision. "It represented the right thing to do then. I believed it at the time and I hold that view now."
But even then, there were opposing views at a high level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the government's own special envoys to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the role. "I witnessed, as a baseline," he later wrote "true dereliction, inaction, and irresponsibility: potentially, deception, incompetence, and dishonesty."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not completely to blame for the Iraq military action. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had composed a memo setting out circumstances in which national priorities might be endangered (encompassing "access to vital raw materials, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the United States should be positioned to operate alone when cooperative measures cannot be orchestrated," particularly citing defense operations against Iraq.
Bush additionally had arrived in the presidency vaguely intent on carrying out what his parent had famously refused to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. After he had been dismissed by the president, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his objective of reducing America's engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mooted defense operations against Iraq.
Bush carried a personal grudge against Saddam, thinking he had been involved in a scheme to kill his parent, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore resented that one of the largest hotels in Baghdad had a floor mural with a portrait of his predecessor's countenance that everyone had to walk over.
Questioning Techniques
However it was Cheney who was one of the most vehement advocating invading Iraq, repeatedly quoting agency briefings that were whether insubstantial or entirely inaccurate. He supported what the Bush administration euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation", the use of interrogation method and physical pressure.
Addressing a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no useful information had come from the torture, Cheney dismissed the findings as "loaded with crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to take steps and put in place programmes to capture the bastards who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it never happened again. That was specifically what they did and they deserve a lot of credit."
Public Image
Cheney reveled in labels imposed on him by detractors such as the Star Wars villain and the sinister presence, and by the notion that he was a dark force directing Bush. In the author's 2013 publication about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Is it me who is the malevolent mastermind in the corner that nobody ever sees leave his hole? That is a effective way to function, in fact."
Commercial Ties
Controversy over his commercial relationships pursued him during his tenure as VP. Even though he had minimal expertise in corporate affairs but established relationships in defence, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial energy corporations, in 1995 as leader and chief executive.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's election partner for the presidency. Debatably, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was granted US contracts worth substantial sums.
It made him rich. His annual income during his period at the company increased from his quarter-million dollars when he was Pentagon chief to millions. When he left in 2000 he had a severance arrangement valued at in excess of $20m|twenty
