The late US vice-president Dick Cheney, who died at the age of 84, was seen as among the most influential holders of the vice-presidency in US history. Although countless VPs were confined to marginal or symbolic positions, Cheney held enormous influence during the presidency of George W Bush, to the point that he was commonly referred to as the "true president".
Bush resented that description and said the relationship was more complicated. He observed that Cheney was courteous, always addressing him in official appearances as President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush challenged even descriptions of their association as a partnership because it implied that they were equals. Regardless of these objections, Cheney considered the laidback president malleable on a whole raft of policy decisions.
The Period Following the Attacks
At the head of a group of conservative hawks that encompassed defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been participating in a meeting at a school in Florida. While Bush traveled to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, directing the destruction of any unidentified airplanes nearing the government building.
Cheney said the assaults transformed him, causing him to be focused on retaliation. Along with other neo-cons, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a invasion of Afghanistan in an endeavor to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the invasion of Iraq, though there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Controversial Policies
He expressed no regrets about the armed intervention, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, nor about the waterboarding of detainees apprehended after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was based on misleading reports echoed by Cheney, was the proper decision. "It proved to be the proper decision to do then. I believed it then and I maintain that stance presently."
But even at the time, there were contrary opinions at a senior level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the White House's own representatives to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the position. "I observed, at a minimum," he wrote later "clear negligence, negligence, and recklessness: in the worst case, lying, incompetence, and dishonesty."
Broader Context
Cheney was not entirely to blame for the Iraq campaign. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had composed a document setting out circumstances in which national priorities might be threatened (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," explicitly mentioning armed actions against Iraq.
Bush additionally had assumed the White House vaguely intent on implementing what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Following he had been sacked by the administration, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his intention of reducing America's involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and proposed military action against Iraq.
Bush bore a personal grudge against Saddam, convinced he had been responsible for a scheme to assassinate his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He also disliked that one of the most prominent accommodations in Baghdad had a ground design with a likeness of his father's face that everyone had to tread upon.
Interrogation Methods
However it was Cheney who was one of the most outspoken supporting invading Iraq, consistently citing information documents that were both thin or entirely deceptive. He endorsed what the Bush government politely called as "enhanced interrogation", the employment of simulated drowning and torture.
Responding to a Senate report in 2014 that concluded that no valuable data had resulted from the torture, Cheney rejected the report as "loaded with crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to implement measures and establish procedures to apprehend the bastards who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it was not repeated. That's exactly what they did and they merit a lot of credit."
Public Persona
Cheney enjoyed labels assigned to him by opponents such as the Star Wars villain and the sinister presence, and by the concept that he was a sinister influence manipulating Bush. In the author's 2013 publication about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Am I the malevolent mastermind in the background that operates invisibly come out of his domain? This represents a advantageous way to operate, in fact."
Corporate Connections
Debate over his commercial relationships followed him through his period as VP. While he had little experience in commerce but established relationships in defence, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest oil and gas conglomerates, in 1995 as chair and top executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's VP candidate for the White House. Debatably, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was granted US deals worth multiple billions.
It greatly increased his wealth. His annual income during his tenure at the firm grew from his quarter-million dollars when he was defence secretary to $4.4m. When he resigned in 2000 he had a severance arrangement worth in excess of $20m|twenty
