The former US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was seen as one of the most significant incumbents of the vice-presidency in the nation's history. While countless second-in-commands were limited to minor or symbolic positions, Cheney held enormous sway during the administration of George W Bush, so much so that he was commonly called as the "true president".
Bush objected to such a characterisation and said the dynamic was more complicated. He noted that Cheney was deferential, invariably calling him in official appearances as President, while he called him as Dick. Bush disputed even portrayals of their relationship as a collaboration because it implied that they were equals. Regardless of such protestations, Cheney considered the easygoing president malleable on a whole raft of administrative determinations.
The Aftermath of 9/11
At the head of a faction of neo-cons that included military head Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been participating in a gathering at a educational institution in Florida. As Bush headed for a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, ordering the shooting down of any non-communicating airplanes heading toward the US Capitol.
Cheney said the strikes changed him, causing him to be focused on retaliation. Along with other neo-cons, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a occupation of Afghanistan in an endeavor to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the invasion of Iraq, although there was little proof of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Controversial Actions
He showed no remorse about the armed intervention, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis died, and not about the waterboarding of individuals captured after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was founded on misleading reports circulated by Cheney, was the right course of action. "It proved to be the correct action to do then. I believed it back then and I maintain that stance today."
Yet even at the time, there were dissenting voices at a top tier about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the government's own delegates to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the position. "I saw, as a baseline," he subsequently stated "true dereliction, negligence, and irresponsibility: in the worst case, falsehoods, ineptitude, and graft."
Broader Context
Cheney was not completely accountable for the Iraq invasion. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for such action. He had drafted a memo detailing scenarios in which US concerns might be compromised (including "access to essential resources, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "America should be positioned to take unilateral action when cooperative measures cannot be orchestrated," explicitly citing armed actions against Iraq.
Bush too had arrived in the White House generally inclined on executing what his predecessor had notably declined to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Subsequent to he had been dismissed by the president, the finance chief Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his intention of reducing America's involvement in the Middle East dispute and mooted armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush bore a private grievance against Saddam, believing he had been behind a conspiracy to kill his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore disliked that one of the biggest accommodations in Baghdad had a ground design with a portrait of his predecessor's visage that all visitors had to step on.
Investigation Approaches
Yet it was Cheney who was among the most outspoken advocating striking Iraq, consistently citing information documents that were whether thin or completely misleading. He backed what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the employment of waterboarding and harsh treatment.
Addressing a Senate analysis in 2014 that found that no useful information had come from the torture, Cheney rejected the report as "full of crap". He stated to Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to implement measures and establish initiatives to capture the individuals who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it never happened again. That's exactly what they did and they deserve a lot of praise."
Public Image
Cheney took pleasure in nicknames assigned to him by opponents such as the Star Wars villain and the dark figure, and by the idea that he was a shadow power controlling Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 publication about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Is it me who is the malevolent mastermind in the background that operates invisibly leave his lair? This represents a nice way to function, truthfully."
Corporate Connections
Controversy over his commercial relationships followed him during his tenure as second-in-command. While he had minimal expertise in corporate affairs but good contacts in security, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's largest energy corporations, in 1995 as chair and CEO.
In 2000 he became Bush's election partner for the executive branch. Debatably, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was given US contracts valued at billions.
It made him rich. His yearly earnings during his tenure at the corporation increased from his $258,394 during his time as defence secretary to over four million. When he departed in 2000 he had a compensation package valued at in excess of $20m|twenty
