The former US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who died at the age of 84, was seen as arguably the most influential occupants of the vice-presidency in US history. Whereas countless VPs were confined to peripheral or ceremonial functions, Cheney wielded enormous power during the presidency of George W Bush, to the point that he was commonly called as the "actual president".
Bush resented that description and stated the dynamic was more nuanced. He noted that Cheney was respectful, consistently referring to him in public as Mr President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush challenged even portrayals of their association as a team because it indicated that they were on equal footing. Regardless of these denials, Cheney found the laidback president accommodating on a broad range of policy decisions.
The Period Following the Attacks
In charge of a faction of neo-conservatives that featured defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been participating in a gathering at a elementary school in Florida. Whereas Bush traveled to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, commanding the shooting down of any unidentified planes nearing the Capitol building.
Cheney stated the assaults transformed him, making him become determined on retribution. Together with other conservative figures, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a invasion of Afghanistan in an attempt to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the military action of Iraq, though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Disputed Actions
He expressed no regrets about the invasion, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis perished, nor about the enhanced interrogation of suspects captured after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was based on misleading information circulated by Cheney, was the right decision. "It was the right thing to do back then. I believed it back then and I hold that view now."
But during that period, there were dissenting voices at a high level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the White House's own representatives to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the role. "I observed, as a baseline," he wrote later "obvious failure, carelessness, and irresponsibility: potentially, lying, unfitness, and dishonesty."
Broader Context
Cheney was not entirely responsible for the Iraq invasion. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for similar measures. He had written a document setting out situations in which American interests might be compromised (including "access to vital raw materials, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the US should be postured to take unilateral action when cooperative measures cannot be orchestrated," explicitly referencing military moves against Iraq.
Bush additionally had entered the White House generally inclined on executing what his predecessor had famously refused to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. Subsequent to he had been fired by the administration, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his plan of lowering America's participation in the regional tensions and suggested military action against Iraq.
Bush carried a personal grudge against Saddam, convinced he had been responsible for a conspiracy to kill his father, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore disliked that one of the largest establishments in Baghdad had a ground design with a image of his predecessor's face that all visitors had to tread upon.
Investigation Approaches
However it was Cheney who was part of the most outspoken supporting invading Iraq, frequently referencing intelligence reports that were either insubstantial or completely deceptive. He endorsed what the Bush government euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the application of simulated drowning and physical pressure.
Responding to a Senate report in 2014 that found that no valuable data had been obtained through the torture, Cheney dismissed the report as "loaded with crap". He told Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to establish protocols and create initiatives to capture the bastards 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 deserve a lot of credit."
Public Persona
Cheney enjoyed labels assigned to him by detractors such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the notion that he was a shadow power manipulating Bush. In the author's 2013 volume about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Do I represent the sinister strategist in the shadows that nobody ever sees emerge from his hole? That is a nice way to work, in fact."
Commercial Ties
Debate over his commercial relationships accompanied him throughout his time as vice-president. While he had little experience in corporate affairs but established relationships in defence, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial petroleum corporations, in 1995 as chair and chief executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's election partner for the White House. Controversially, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was granted US deals totaling billions.
It made him rich. His annual income during his tenure at the company grew from his $258,394 while military head to $4.4m. When he departed in 2000 he had a package totaling in excess of $20m|twenty
