The former US vice-president Dick Cheney, who has died at the age of 84, was regarded as one of the most influential holders of that position in the nation's history. Whereas countless VPs were limited to marginal or symbolic functions, Cheney exercised huge power during the presidency of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was frequently referred to as the "actual president".
Bush disliked that description and stated the dynamic was more nuanced. He observed that Cheney was deferential, invariably referring to him in public settings as President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush challenged even characterisations of their relationship as a collaboration because it suggested that they were equals. Regardless of these denials, Cheney considered the easygoing president accommodating on a wide array of administrative determinations.
The Period Following the Attacks
Leading of a group of conservative hawks that included Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been taking part in a meeting at a school in Florida. As Bush headed for a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, ordering the shooting down of any unresponsive planes heading toward the Capitol building.
Cheney claimed the assaults changed him, causing him to be focused on revenge. Together with other neo-cons, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a occupation of Afghanistan in an attempt to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, even though there was little proof of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Controversial Decisions
He voiced no apologies about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis perished, nor about the harsh treatment of individuals rounded up after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was founded on misleading intelligence circulated by Cheney, was the right course of action. "It was the right thing to do back then. I believed it back then and I hold that view presently."
However even then, there were dissenting voices at a high level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the administration's own representatives to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the position. "I witnessed, at the very least," he later wrote "true dereliction, carelessness, and unaccountability: potentially, deception, unfitness, and corruption."
Broader Context
Cheney was not entirely responsible for the Iraq military action. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had composed a document detailing circumstances in which US concerns might be endangered (including "obtaining essential resources, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "the US should be positioned to take unilateral action when collective action cannot be arranged," particularly referencing armed actions against Iraq.
Bush too had assumed the Oval Office vaguely intent on executing what his parent had notably declined to do in 1991; topple Saddam. Following he had been fired by the administration, the finance chief Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his objective of diminishing America's engagement in the Middle East dispute and proposed defense operations against Iraq.
Bush carried a private grievance against Saddam, convinced he had been involved in a conspiracy to assassinate his parent, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore objected to that one of the biggest accommodations in Baghdad had a floor mural with a likeness of his parent's countenance that each person had to tread upon.
Investigation Approaches
But it was Cheney who was among the most vehement advocating attacking Iraq, repeatedly quoting information documents that were both thin or entirely deceptive. He supported what the Bush administration indirectly described as "intensive questioning", the use of simulated drowning and harsh treatment.
Answering a Senate report in 2014 that concluded that no valuable data had been obtained through the interrogation methods, Cheney rejected the conclusions as "full of crap". He told Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to take steps and put in place initiatives to apprehend the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it would not recur. That's exactly what they did and they merit a lot of credit."
External Perception
Cheney reveled in monikers given to him by detractors such as the Star Wars villain and The Prince of Darkness, and by the notion that he was a sinister influence directing Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 publication about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Do I represent the evil genius in the corner that remains unseen come out of his domain? That is a effective way to function, actually."
Corporate Connections
Dispute over his commercial relationships followed him during his tenure as VP. Although he had limited background in corporate affairs but established relationships in defence, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's biggest oil and gas conglomerates, in 1995 as chair and top executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's running mate for the executive branch. Debatably, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was given US contracts worth multiple billions.
It made him rich. His yearly earnings during his period at the company increased from his quarter-million dollars when he was military head to $4.4m. When he left in 2000 he had a severance arrangement valued at more than $20m|twenty
