The deceased US vice-president Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was considered among the most significant holders of the vice-presidency in the nation's history. While many vice-presidents had to settle for peripheral or symbolic roles, Cheney exercised enormous sway during the administration of George W Bush, to the point that he was commonly described as the "actual president".
Bush resented that description and claimed the dynamic was more complicated. He pointed out that Cheney was respectful, consistently calling him in public settings as the President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush challenged even descriptions of their relationship as a partnership because it indicated that they were on equal footing. Despite these denials, Cheney viewed the laidback president pliable on a broad range of administrative determinations.
A Period Following the Attacks
In charge of a faction of neo-conservatives that included military head Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in response to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been participating in a gathering at a elementary school in Florida. Whereas Bush traveled to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, directing the destruction of any unidentified aircraft heading toward the Capitol building.
Cheney said the assaults transformed him, making him become focused on retaliation. Together with other neo-cons, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a invasion of Afghanistan in an effort to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then vigorously pushed for the armed intervention of Iraq, although there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Disputed Decisions
He voiced no apologies about the armed intervention, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis perished, nor about the waterboarding of suspects rounded up after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was based on inaccurate information echoed by Cheney, was the proper decision. "It proved to be the right thing to do at that time. I believed it then and I hold that view now."
However even then, there were contrary opinions at a top tier about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the government's own delegates to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the post. "I saw, at the very least," he later wrote "clear negligence, negligence, and unaccountability: at worst, deception, incompetence, and graft."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not entirely accountable for the Iraq campaign. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had advocated for comparable steps. He had drafted a memo outlining scenarios in which national priorities might be compromised (including "access to vital raw materials, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the US should be postured to operate alone when cooperative measures cannot be orchestrated," explicitly referencing military moves against Iraq.
Bush additionally had assumed the Oval Office generally inclined on executing what his father had notably declined to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. Following he had been sacked by the administration, the finance chief Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his plan of lowering America's involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and proposed military action against Iraq.
Bush held a private grievance against Saddam, convinced he had been responsible for a scheme to assassinate 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 ground design with a likeness of his parent's visage that all visitors had to walk over.
Interrogation Methods
Yet it was Cheney who was among the most vehement advocating striking Iraq, repeatedly referencing agency briefings that were whether weak or totally misleading. He supported what the Bush government politely called as "advanced techniques", the employment of interrogation method and torture.
Answering a Senate document in 2014 that found that no valuable data had resulted from the torture, Cheney disregarded the report as "riddled with crap". He told Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to implement measures and put in place programmes to apprehend the individuals who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and ensure it never happened again. That is precisely what they did and they merit a lot of recognition."
Public Persona
Cheney enjoyed monikers imposed on him by opponents such as Darth Vader and The Prince of Darkness, and by the concept that he was a shadow power manipulating Bush. In the journalist's 2013 publication about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Do I represent the sinister strategist in the shadows that operates invisibly leave his hole? That is a advantageous way to operate, actually."
Commercial Ties
Dispute over his commercial relationships followed him throughout his time as VP. While he had limited background in corporate affairs but strong connections in security, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's largest oil and gas conglomerates, in 1995 as chairman and top executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's running mate for the White House. Controversially, during the military campaign, Halliburton was granted US deals valued at billions.
It made him rich. His yearly earnings during his tenure at the firm increased from his previous salary while military head to over four million. When he departed in 2000 he had a severance arrangement worth in excess of $20m|twenty
