The former US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at the age of 84, was regarded as one of the most influential occupants of that position in American history. While countless vice-presidents had to settle for peripheral or ceremonial roles, Cheney exercised huge influence during the term of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was frequently described as the "actual president".
Bush objected to such a characterisation and said the connection was more complex. He noted that Cheney was deferential, consistently calling him in public as President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush questioned even descriptions of their relationship as a team because it indicated that they were equals. Regardless of these denials, Cheney found the easygoing president accommodating on a wide array of policy decisions.
The Aftermath of 9/11
At the head of a faction of conservative hawks that included defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for 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 session at a school in Florida. Whereas Bush made his way to a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney took command, ordering the destruction of any unresponsive planes nearing the Capitol building.
Cheney claimed the strikes transformed him, leading him to become determined on revenge. Together with other neo-cons, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a takeover of Afghanistan in an endeavor to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the armed intervention of Iraq, even though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Debated Decisions
He showed no remorse about the armed intervention, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, or about the harsh treatment of detainees rounded up after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was founded on misleading reports echoed by Cheney, was the right decision. "It represented the proper decision to do back then. I was convinced at the time and I believe it presently."
Yet even at the time, there were dissenting voices at a top tier about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the administration's own delegates to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the position. "I observed, at a minimum," he later wrote "obvious failure, carelessness, and irresponsibility: potentially, lying, ineptitude, and dishonesty."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not solely responsible for the Iraq military action. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had written a memorandum setting out scenarios in which US concerns might be endangered (including "obtaining vital raw materials, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the US should be positioned to take unilateral action when cooperative measures prove impossible," particularly citing defense operations against Iraq.
Bush additionally had entered the Oval Office vaguely intent on implementing what his predecessor had specifically avoided to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Following he had been fired by the administration, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his intention of lowering America's engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and proposed armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush held a individual resentment against Saddam, convinced he had been responsible for a scheme to assassinate his parent, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally disliked that one of the largest hotels in Baghdad had a ground design with a likeness of his parent's countenance that each person had to walk over.
Questioning Techniques
But it was Cheney who was one of the most outspoken supporting striking Iraq, frequently citing information documents that were both insubstantial or entirely inaccurate. He backed what the Bush administration euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the employment of interrogation method and torture.
Addressing a Senate document in 2014 that concluded that no valuable data had been obtained through the interrogation methods, Cheney dismissed the report as "full of crap". He stated to Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to establish protocols and establish programmes to capture the perpetrators who took the lives of 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 recognition."
Public Persona
Cheney took pleasure in labels assigned to him by opponents such as Darth Vader and the dark figure, and by the concept that he was a dark force controlling Bush. In the journalist's 2013 volume about the pair, 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 emerge from his domain? That is a advantageous way to function, truthfully."
Commercial Ties
Debate over his commercial relationships pursued him through his period as vice-president. Although he had minimal expertise 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 energy companies, in 1995 as chairman and top executive.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's VP candidate for the White House. Controversially, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was given US contracts worth multiple billions.
It made him rich. His annual income during his period at the firm rose from his quarter-million dollars during his time as defence secretary to millions. When he resigned in 2000 he had a severance arrangement totaling over $20m|twenty
