The late US vice-president Dick Cheney, who died at the age of 84, was seen as one of the most powerful occupants of the vice-presidency in the nation's history. Although many vice-presidents were confined to minor or symbolic functions, Cheney wielded substantial power during the term of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was frequently called as the "actual president".
Bush disliked that description and stated the dynamic was more complex. He pointed out that Cheney was respectful, invariably calling him in public settings as Mr President, while he called him as Dick. Bush questioned even portrayals of their partnership as a collaboration because it suggested that they were equals. Despite such protestations, Cheney considered the easygoing president malleable on a whole raft of governmental choices.
A Post-9/11 Era
At the head of a group of neo-cons that encompassed defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been attending a session at a educational institution in Florida. As Bush made his way to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, ordering the destruction of any unresponsive airplanes nearing the government building.
Cheney said the assaults changed him, causing him to be focused on retribution. In conjunction with other neo-conservatives, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a takeover of Afghanistan in an endeavor to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the invasion of Iraq, though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Controversial Policies
He showed no remorse about the armed intervention, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis died, nor about the harsh treatment of detainees apprehended after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was founded on inaccurate information repeated by Cheney, was the proper decision. "It proved to be the proper decision to do then. I believed it then and I believe it today."
Yet even then, there were dissenting voices at a top tier about the poor management of Iraq. One of the administration's own representatives to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the post. "I saw, as a baseline," he wrote later "true dereliction, inaction, and irresponsibility: at worst, falsehoods, ineptitude, and dishonesty."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not solely responsible for the Iraq campaign. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had advocated for comparable steps. He had written a document outlining scenarios in which US concerns might be compromised (encompassing "access to vital raw materials, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the US should be positioned to act independently when joint efforts cannot be arranged," explicitly citing defense operations against Iraq.
Bush also had assumed the White House generally inclined on executing what his predecessor had specifically avoided to do in 1991; remove Saddam. After he had been dismissed by the White House, the finance chief Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his plan of reducing America's involvement in the regional tensions and mooted defense operations against Iraq.
Bush held a individual resentment against Saddam, believing he had been responsible for a scheme to assassinate his parent, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore disliked that one of the biggest accommodations in Baghdad had a ground design with a portrait of his parent's countenance that all visitors had to step on.
Questioning Techniques
Yet it was Cheney who was part of the most vehement supporting attacking Iraq, frequently citing information documents that were both thin or totally deceptive. He backed what the Bush White House indirectly described as "intensive questioning", the use of simulated drowning and harsh treatment.
Responding to a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no useful information had been obtained through the harsh techniques, Cheney disregarded the report as "full of crap". He informed Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to implement measures and create procedures to apprehend the perpetrators who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it never happened again. That's exactly what they did and they earn a lot of recognition."
Public Image
Cheney took pleasure in nicknames given to him by critics such as the Star Wars villain and The Prince of Darkness, and by the concept that he was a dark force controlling Bush. In the journalist's 2013 publication about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Am I the evil genius in the shadows that operates invisibly leave his domain? This represents a nice way to work, truthfully."
Commercial Ties
Debate over his commercial relationships pursued him during his tenure as vice-president. Even though he had minimal expertise in business but established relationships in security, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's biggest petroleum conglomerates, in 1995 as leader and top executive.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's election partner for the presidency. Controversially, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was granted US contracts valued at substantial sums.
It significantly boosted his finances. His yearly earnings during his tenure at the firm grew from his quarter-million dollars when he was Pentagon chief to $4.4m. When he resigned in 2000 he had a severance arrangement valued at in excess of $20m|twenty
