The former US VP Dick Cheney, who has died at the age of 84, was regarded as arguably the most significant incumbents of that office in the nation's history. Whereas many vice-presidents had to settle for marginal or symbolic positions, Cheney exercised enormous power during the term of George W Bush, so much so that he was commonly called as the "true president".
Bush resented this portrayal and stated the connection was more nuanced. He pointed out that Cheney was deferential, invariably calling 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 on equal footing. Regardless of such protestations, Cheney found the easygoing president malleable on a whole raft of governmental choices.
A Post-9/11 Era
At the head of a contingent of neo-cons that encompassed military head Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been taking part in a session at a educational institution in Florida. While Bush made his way to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, commanding the destruction of any non-communicating airplanes approaching the Capitol building.
Cheney said the strikes altered his perspective, leading him to become determined on revenge. Together with other conservative figures, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a takeover of Afghanistan in an attempt to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then vigorously pushed for the invasion of Iraq, though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Debated Actions
He voiced no apologies about the military campaign, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, or about the waterboarding of detainees rounded up after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was founded on faulty intelligence echoed by Cheney, was the right course of action. "It proved to be the right thing to do back then. I believed it then and I believe it now."
But even then, there were dissenting voices at a top tier about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the administration's own delegates to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the role. "I observed, at a minimum," he wrote later "obvious failure, negligence, and recklessness: in the worst case, lying, ineptitude, and graft."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not completely responsible for the Iraq invasion. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for similar measures. He had written a memorandum outlining scenarios in which national priorities might be threatened (encompassing "availability of essential resources, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the United States should be positioned to take unilateral action when cooperative measures prove impossible," particularly citing defense operations against Iraq.
Bush also had entered the White House generally inclined on executing what his father had notably declined to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Subsequent to he had been sacked by the White House, the finance chief Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his plan of diminishing America's participation in the regional tensions and proposed military action against Iraq.
Bush carried a individual resentment against Saddam, thinking he had been responsible for a conspiracy to murder his father, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He also disliked that one of the most prominent establishments in Baghdad had a floor mural with a portrait of his parent's countenance that all visitors had to walk over.
Interrogation Methods
Yet it was Cheney who was part of the most vociferous supporting attacking Iraq, repeatedly quoting information documents that were both thin or totally inaccurate. He endorsed what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "advanced techniques", the use of simulated drowning and harsh treatment.
Answering a Senate document in 2014 that concluded that no valuable data had come from the torture, Cheney disregarded the report as "full of crap". He stated to Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to establish protocols and create procedures to catch the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it was not repeated. That's exactly what they did and they earn a lot of recognition."
Public Image
Cheney enjoyed labels assigned to him by detractors such as the dark character and The Prince of Darkness, and by the notion that he was a shadow power directing Bush. In the author's 2013 book about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Do I represent the sinister strategist in the background that nobody ever sees emerge from his lair? It's a nice way to operate, truthfully."
Business Interests
Dispute over his commercial relationships accompanied him through his period as second-in-command. Although he had limited background in commerce but strong connections in defence, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest energy conglomerates, in 1995 as chair and top executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's VP candidate for the executive branch. Contentiously, during the military campaign, Halliburton was awarded US contracts totaling substantial sums.
It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly compensation during his time at the corporation rose from his $258,394 during his time as military head to millions. When he resigned in 2000 he had a severance arrangement valued at more than $20m|twenty
