The former US vice-president Dick Cheney, who passed away at the age of 84, was considered arguably the most significant incumbents of the vice-presidency in American history. While many VPs had to settle for marginal or symbolic roles, Cheney held huge power during the presidency of George W Bush, to the point that he was often described as the "real president".
Bush resented this portrayal and claimed the relationship was more complicated. He pointed out that Cheney was courteous, consistently addressing him in official appearances as Mr President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush challenged even descriptions of their partnership as a team because it implied that they were peers. Regardless of these objections, Cheney found the laidback president malleable on a wide array of governmental choices.
The Post-9/11 Era
At the head of a group of neo-conservatives that encompassed military head Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been taking part in a gathering at a school in Florida. As Bush traveled to a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, ordering the downing of any unidentified aircraft nearing the US Capitol.
Cheney said the attacks altered his perspective, causing him to be focused on revenge. Along with other neo-cons, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a takeover of Afghanistan in an effort to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the military action of Iraq, although there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Debated Policies
He voiced no apologies about the invasion, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis died, and not about the harsh treatment of suspects apprehended after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was predicated on faulty information repeated by Cheney, was the right decision. "It proved to be the proper decision to do back then. I believed it then and I believe it presently."
Yet even at the time, there were dissenting voices at a high level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the White House's own representatives to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the role. "I saw, at a minimum," he later wrote "obvious failure, carelessness, and recklessness: potentially, lying, incompetence, and graft."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not solely responsible for the Iraq campaign. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had written a document outlining scenarios in which US concerns might be threatened (featuring "availability of crucial commodities, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "the US should be postured to operate alone when joint efforts cannot be arranged," particularly mentioning armed actions against Iraq.
Bush additionally had arrived in the Oval Office somewhat determined on carrying out what his father had specifically avoided to do in 1991; topple Saddam. Following he had been sacked by the administration, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his intention of lowering America's involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mooted armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush held a private grievance against Saddam, convinced he had been behind a scheme to kill his parent, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally resented that one of the biggest accommodations in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his father's countenance that everyone had to step on.
Questioning Techniques
But it was Cheney who was part of the most vehement behind attacking Iraq, repeatedly quoting agency briefings that were both insubstantial or completely deceptive. He backed what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the employment of interrogation method and torture.
Answering a Senate report in 2014 that found that no useful information had been obtained through the interrogation methods, Cheney dismissed the conclusions as "loaded with crap". He told Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to establish protocols and establish programmes to capture the bastards who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it was not repeated. That's exactly what they did and they deserve a lot of credit."
External Perception
Cheney reveled in monikers assigned to him by opponents such as the Star Wars villain and The Prince of Darkness, and by the idea that he was a dark force manipulating Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 book about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Do I represent the evil genius in the shadows that nobody ever sees emerge from his domain? This represents a advantageous way to work, actually."
Business Interests
Controversy over his commercial relationships followed him during his tenure as vice-president. While he had little experience in corporate affairs but good contacts in defence, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's biggest oil and gas corporations, in 1995 as leader and CEO.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's VP candidate for the presidency. Contentiously, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was granted US contracts valued at substantial sums.
It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly compensation during his period at the company rose from his quarter-million dollars during his time as defence secretary to $4.4m. When he resigned in 2000 he had a compensation package worth more than $20m|twenty
