The late US vice-president Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was regarded as among the most powerful incumbents of that office in the nation's history. Although numerous VPs had to settle for marginal or symbolic positions, Cheney exercised huge sway during the administration of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was frequently referred to as the "real president".
Bush resented that description and said the relationship was more nuanced. He noted that Cheney was courteous, invariably addressing him in public settings as Mr President, while he called him as Dick. Bush challenged even portrayals of their association as a team because it implied that they were equals. Despite such protestations, Cheney considered the relaxed president pliable on a broad range of administrative determinations.
The Period Following the Attacks
Leading of a group of conservative hawks that included defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been attending a session at a school in Florida. Whereas Bush made his way to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, directing the downing of any unresponsive airplanes approaching the government building.
Cheney claimed the attacks altered his perspective, leading him to become determined on retaliation. In conjunction with other conservative figures, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a occupation of Afghanistan in an endeavor to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the invasion of Iraq, although there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Controversial Policies
He showed no remorse about the armed intervention, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, and not about the enhanced interrogation of suspects apprehended after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was predicated on misleading intelligence circulated by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It proved to be the correct action to do then. I had faith at the time and I hold that view presently."
However even at the time, there were contrary opinions at a senior level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the administration's own representatives to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the position. "I observed, at the very least," he wrote later "clear negligence, negligence, and recklessness: potentially, deception, incompetence, and corruption."
Broader Context
Cheney was not entirely responsible for the Iraq invasion. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had written a document detailing scenarios in which American interests might be endangered (featuring "obtaining essential resources, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "America should be postured to operate alone when cooperative measures cannot be orchestrated," particularly citing defense operations against Iraq.
Bush additionally had arrived in the Oval Office vaguely intent on executing what his predecessor had notably declined to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Following he had been fired by the administration, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his objective of reducing America's participation in the Middle East dispute and mooted armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush carried a private grievance against Saddam, thinking he had been behind a plot to assassinate his father, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore objected to that one of the most prominent establishments in Baghdad had a ground design with a image of his father's face that all visitors had to walk over.
Interrogation Methods
Yet it was Cheney who was part of the most outspoken supporting invading Iraq, repeatedly referencing information documents that were both thin or completely inaccurate. He endorsed what the Bush White House politely called as "enhanced interrogation", the application of waterboarding and physical pressure.
Responding to a Senate report in 2014 that determined that no useful information had come from the interrogation methods, Cheney disregarded the report as "full of crap". He told Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to take steps and create procedures to capture the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and ensure it was not repeated. That is precisely what they did and they merit a lot of credit."
Public Image
Cheney reveled in labels assigned to him by detractors such as Darth Vader and the sinister presence, and by the idea that he was a dark force manipulating Bush. In the journalist's 2013 publication about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Am I the sinister strategist in the shadows that operates invisibly come out of his hole? This represents a nice way to operate, truthfully."
Corporate Connections
Dispute over his commercial relationships pursued him through his period as second-in-command. While he had little experience in business but established relationships in defence, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's largest petroleum corporations, in 1995 as leader and CEO.
In 2000 he became Bush's VP candidate for the presidency. Controversially, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was granted US deals totaling substantial sums.
It significantly boosted his finances. His annual income during his period at the firm grew from his $258,394 while defence secretary to $4.4m. When he left in 2000 he had a package valued at more than $20m|twenty
