The former US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was seen as among the most powerful incumbents of that office in American history. While numerous VPs had to settle for minor or figurehead positions, Cheney exercised enormous power during the presidency of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was commonly called as the "real president".
Bush disliked such a characterisation and said the connection was more complicated. He pointed out that Cheney was courteous, invariably addressing him in official appearances as Mr President, while he called him as Dick. Bush questioned even characterisations of their association as a team because it indicated that they were peers. Regardless of these denials, Cheney considered the easygoing president malleable on a wide array of policy decisions.
The Post-9/11 Era
In charge of a contingent of neo-conservatives that featured Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been participating in a meeting at a elementary school in Florida. As Bush headed for a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took command, ordering the downing of any non-communicating planes approaching the US Capitol.
Cheney claimed the strikes changed him, causing him to be intent on retaliation. In conjunction with other conservative figures, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a invasion of Afghanistan in an attempt to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, though there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Controversial Policies
He showed no remorse about the armed intervention, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis perished, or about the waterboarding of individuals apprehended after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was predicated on inaccurate reports echoed by Cheney, was the proper path to take. "It was the right thing to do then. I was convinced at the time and I hold that view today."
But even at the time, there were opposing views at a high level about the botched execution 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, at a minimum," he wrote later "true dereliction, carelessness, and unaccountability: at worst, falsehoods, unfitness, and corruption."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not solely to blame for the Iraq invasion. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had drafted a document outlining circumstances in which national priorities might be compromised (including "availability of crucial commodities, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the US should be positioned to take unilateral action when collective action cannot be orchestrated," specifically citing armed actions against Iraq.
Bush additionally had assumed the Oval Office vaguely intent on implementing what his father had specifically avoided to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. After he had been dismissed by the president, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his intention of reducing America's engagement in the regional tensions and proposed defense operations against Iraq.
Bush held a individual resentment against Saddam, thinking he had been responsible for a plot to murder his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He also resented that one of the biggest establishments in Baghdad had a floor mural with a likeness of his parent's countenance that everyone had to step on.
Interrogation Methods
However it was Cheney who was part of the most vehement advocating invading Iraq, repeatedly citing intelligence reports that were whether thin or entirely deceptive. He backed what the Bush government euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation", the employment of waterboarding and physical pressure.
Responding to a Senate report in 2014 that concluded that no valuable data had come from the torture, Cheney rejected the conclusions as "full of crap". He stated to Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to implement measures and create programmes to apprehend the individuals who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it was not repeated. That is precisely what they did and they earn a lot of credit."
Public Persona
Cheney took pleasure in labels imposed on him by detractors such as the dark character and The Prince of Darkness, and by the notion that he was a sinister influence manipulating Bush. In the author's 2013 book 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 background that remains unseen leave his domain? It's a nice way to function, actually."
Corporate Connections
Dispute over his corporate affiliations followed him through his period as vice-president. While he had little experience in corporate affairs but established relationships in military, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's largest petroleum corporations, in 1995 as chair and top executive.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's election partner for the White House. Debatably, during the military campaign, Halliburton was given US contracts totaling substantial sums.
It greatly increased his wealth. His annual income during his tenure at the firm grew from his $258,394 during his time as Pentagon chief to over four million. When he left in 2000 he had a severance arrangement worth more than $20m|twenty
