The former US vice-president Dick Cheney, who died at age 84, was seen as among the most influential occupants of the vice-presidency in the nation's history. Whereas countless vice-presidents had to settle for marginal or symbolic functions, Cheney exercised huge influence during the term of George W Bush, so much so that he was commonly described as the "true president".
Bush disliked that description and claimed the connection was more nuanced. He noted that Cheney was respectful, always addressing him in public as Mr President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush questioned even portrayals of their partnership as a team because it indicated that they were peers. In spite of these denials, Cheney viewed the relaxed president pliable on a broad range of administrative determinations.
The Post-9/11 Era
In charge of a group of conservative hawks that featured military head Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been participating in a meeting at a elementary school in Florida. As Bush made his way to a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, ordering the downing of any unresponsive aircraft approaching the government building.
Cheney stated the assaults changed him, leading him to become determined on revenge. Together with other neo-conservatives, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a invasion of Afghanistan in an attempt to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the armed intervention of Iraq, although there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Controversial Actions
He showed no remorse about the invasion, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis perished, nor about the enhanced interrogation of detainees captured after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was founded on faulty reports echoed by Cheney, was the proper course of action. "It represented the right thing to do then. I believed it back then and I believe it today."
But even at the time, there were opposing views at a high level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the White House's own delegates to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the post. "I witnessed, at the very least," he later wrote "clear negligence, inaction, and unaccountability: potentially, deception, unfitness, and corruption."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not solely to blame for the Iraq campaign. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for similar measures. He had drafted a memo outlining scenarios in which American interests might be threatened (featuring "access to crucial commodities, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the United States should be prepared to act independently when joint efforts cannot be orchestrated," specifically citing armed actions against Iraq.
Bush too had assumed the Oval Office vaguely intent on carrying out what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; topple Saddam. Subsequent to he had been sacked by the administration, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his objective of diminishing America's participation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and proposed armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush bore a private grievance against Saddam, convinced he had been involved in a scheme to kill his parent, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore disliked that one of the most prominent establishments in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his parent's visage that each person had to tread upon.
Interrogation Methods
Yet it was Cheney who was part of the most vociferous supporting striking Iraq, consistently referencing information documents that were either thin or entirely deceptive. He supported what the Bush White House politely called as "enhanced interrogation", the employment of interrogation method and torture.
Addressing a Senate report in 2014 that found that no valuable data had been obtained through the harsh techniques, Cheney dismissed the report as "full of crap". He stated to Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to implement measures and create procedures to capture the individuals who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it never happened again. That was specifically what they did and they merit a lot of recognition."
External Perception
Cheney enjoyed labels imposed on him by critics such as Darth Vader and the dark figure, and by the idea that he was a shadow power controlling Bush. In the journalist's 2013 volume about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Am I the sinister strategist in the background that operates invisibly leave his hole? This represents a nice way to function, actually."
Business Interests
Controversy over his business interests accompanied him throughout his time as second-in-command. While he had little experience in business but strong connections in military, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial petroleum companies, in 1995 as chairman and chief executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's running mate for the executive branch. Contentiously, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was granted US contracts valued at multiple billions.
It significantly boosted his finances. His yearly compensation during his period at the company increased from his $258,394 when he was military head to millions. When he resigned in 2000 he had a severance arrangement worth more than $20m|twenty
