The late US vice-president Dick Cheney, who died at age 84, was regarded as arguably the most influential holders of that office in US history. Whereas numerous vice-presidents had to settle for minor or ceremonial positions, Cheney exercised enormous power during the presidency of George W Bush, so much so that he was commonly called as the "real president".
Bush objected to such a characterisation and said the dynamic was more nuanced. He noted that Cheney was courteous, invariably calling him in official appearances as Mr President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush challenged even descriptions of their association as a partnership because it implied that they were peers. In spite of these denials, Cheney found the easygoing president malleable on a whole raft of administrative determinations.
A Aftermath of 9/11
In charge of a contingent of neo-cons that featured Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been attending a meeting at a educational institution in Florida. Whereas Bush made his way to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, commanding the destruction of any unresponsive airplanes nearing the government building.
Cheney said the assaults changed him, leading him to become focused on revenge. Along with other neo-conservatives, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a takeover of Afghanistan in an attempt to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the invasion of Iraq, although there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Debated Decisions
He showed no remorse about the armed intervention, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis perished, nor about the waterboarding of detainees captured after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was based on faulty information circulated by Cheney, was the right path to take. "It represented the right thing to do back then. I had faith back then and I maintain that stance now."
However during that period, there were dissenting voices at a high level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the administration's own representatives to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the position. "I observed, at a minimum," he wrote later "clear negligence, carelessness, and unaccountability: at worst, lying, incompetence, and graft."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not entirely accountable for the Iraq campaign. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had drafted a memorandum outlining scenarios in which national priorities might be threatened (including "availability of crucial commodities, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the US should be postured to act independently when cooperative measures cannot be orchestrated," explicitly citing armed actions against Iraq.
Bush additionally had assumed the White House somewhat determined on implementing what his parent had famously refused to do in 1991; topple Saddam. Subsequent to he had been fired by the White House, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his intention of reducing America's participation in the Middle East dispute and mooted military action against Iraq.
Bush carried a personal grudge against Saddam, thinking he had been involved in a conspiracy to kill his parent, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore disliked that one of the most prominent hotels in Baghdad had a ground design with a portrait of his parent's face that everyone had to tread upon.
Interrogation Methods
However it was Cheney who was one of the most vociferous behind attacking Iraq, consistently citing agency briefings that were both insubstantial or entirely misleading. He endorsed what the Bush administration politely called as "intensive questioning", the application of waterboarding and torture.
Addressing a Senate report in 2014 that found that no actionable intelligence had come from the torture, Cheney disregarded the conclusions as "full of crap". He stated to Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to establish protocols and put in place procedures to capture the perpetrators who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it would not recur. That's exactly what they did and they deserve a lot of praise."
Public Image
Cheney reveled in labels assigned to him by opponents such as the Star Wars villain and the sinister presence, and by the notion that he was a dark force manipulating Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 volume about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Am I the sinister strategist in the corner that operates invisibly emerge from his domain? It's a nice way to operate, truthfully."
Corporate Connections
Controversy over his commercial relationships followed him during his tenure as second-in-command. While he had minimal expertise in commerce but strong connections in military, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest petroleum companies, in 1995 as chairman and chief executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's VP candidate for the executive branch. Controversially, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was granted US deals valued at substantial sums.
It greatly increased his wealth. His annual income during his tenure at the corporation rose from his quarter-million dollars when he was Pentagon chief to over four million. When he resigned in 2000 he had a severance arrangement worth in excess of $20m|twenty
