The late US vice-president Dick Cheney, who has died at age 84, was regarded as among the most powerful holders of that office in US history. Whereas many second-in-commands were confined to peripheral or ceremonial positions, Cheney wielded substantial influence during the term of George W Bush, to the point that he was frequently called as the "true president".
Bush disliked such a characterisation and claimed the dynamic was more complicated. He noted that Cheney was respectful, consistently referring to him in public settings as President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush questioned even characterisations of their relationship as a partnership because it indicated that they were equals. Regardless of these objections, Cheney viewed the relaxed president malleable on a broad range of administrative determinations.
The Post-9/11 Era
Leading of a faction of conservative hawks that encompassed military head Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been participating in a meeting at a school in Florida. While Bush traveled to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, commanding the shooting down of any unresponsive airplanes heading toward the government building.
Cheney claimed the assaults altered his perspective, making him become determined on revenge. Together with other conservative figures, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a takeover of Afghanistan in an attempt to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the military action of Iraq, although there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Controversial Policies
He voiced no apologies about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis perished, and not about the enhanced interrogation of detainees rounded up after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was predicated on inaccurate reports circulated by Cheney, was the right course of action. "It proved to be the right thing to do back then. I believed it back then and I maintain that stance now."
Yet even at the time, there were opposing views at a top tier about the poor management of Iraq. One of the government's own delegates to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the post. "I witnessed, as a baseline," he wrote later "true dereliction, carelessness, and irresponsibility: at worst, lying, ineptitude, and graft."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not completely responsible for the Iraq campaign. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had drafted a memo detailing scenarios in which US concerns might be endangered (encompassing "obtaining crucial commodities, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the United States should be postured to take unilateral action when collective action cannot be orchestrated," specifically citing military moves against Iraq.
Bush too had entered the Oval Office vaguely intent on carrying out what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. Subsequent to he had been fired by the president, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his plan of lowering America's engagement in the regional tensions and proposed armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush held a private grievance against Saddam, convinced he had been responsible for a scheme to kill his father, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore disliked that one of the most prominent accommodations in Baghdad had a floor mural with a image of his father's countenance that each person had to tread upon.
Investigation Approaches
But it was Cheney who was among the most outspoken supporting attacking Iraq, frequently citing information documents that were either weak or entirely misleading. He endorsed what the Bush government euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation", the employment of interrogation method and torture.
Addressing a Senate report in 2014 that concluded that no actionable intelligence had resulted from the torture, Cheney dismissed the findings as "riddled with crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to establish protocols and establish procedures to capture the individuals who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it would not recur. That was specifically what they did and they earn a lot of credit."
Public Persona
Cheney enjoyed labels assigned to him by critics such as the Star Wars villain and the dark figure, and by the idea that he was a sinister influence manipulating Bush. In the journalist's 2013 book about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Am I the sinister strategist in the corner that remains unseen leave his hole? That is a advantageous way to operate, in fact."
Corporate Connections
Debate over his commercial relationships pursued him throughout his time as VP. While he had limited background in commerce but good contacts in defence, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's largest petroleum conglomerates, in 1995 as chair and top executive.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's VP candidate for the White House. Controversially, during the military campaign, Halliburton was given US agreements worth substantial sums.
It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly compensation during his tenure at the corporation grew from his quarter-million dollars during his time as defence secretary to over four million. When he left in 2000 he had a compensation package worth in excess of $20m|twenty
