The late US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at the age of 84, was seen as arguably the most powerful occupants of that office in US history. While countless vice-presidents were confined to peripheral or symbolic roles, Cheney held huge influence during the presidency of George W Bush, so much so that he was commonly called as the "real president".
Bush objected to such a characterisation and stated the connection was more complex. He pointed out that Cheney was deferential, always addressing him in public as President, while he called him as Dick. Bush challenged even portrayals of their relationship as a partnership because it indicated that they were peers. Despite these denials, Cheney considered the relaxed president malleable on a broad range of administrative determinations.
The Period Following the Attacks
At the head of a contingent of neo-conservatives that featured military head Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been attending a meeting at a school in Florida. Whereas Bush made his way to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, commanding the shooting down of any non-communicating airplanes nearing the US Capitol.
Cheney claimed the attacks transformed him, leading him to become intent on revenge. Along with other conservative figures, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a occupation of Afghanistan in an endeavor to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the invasion of Iraq, although there was little proof of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Controversial Decisions
He showed no remorse about the armed intervention, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis died, and not about the enhanced interrogation of individuals apprehended after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was founded on misleading intelligence echoed by Cheney, was the right path to take. "It represented the right thing to do then. I believed it back then and I maintain that stance today."
However even then, there were contrary opinions at a top tier about the poor management of Iraq. One of the administration's own special envoys to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the role. "I observed, at the very least," he subsequently stated "obvious failure, negligence, and unaccountability: in the worst case, falsehoods, incompetence, and corruption."
Broader Context
Cheney was not entirely to blame for the Iraq military action. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for similar measures. He had composed a document outlining situations in which American interests might be endangered (encompassing "obtaining essential resources, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "America should be prepared to operate alone when collective action cannot be arranged," specifically mentioning defense operations against Iraq.
Bush also had entered the presidency generally inclined on executing what his parent had specifically avoided to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Subsequent to he had been dismissed by the president, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his plan of lowering America's engagement in the Middle East dispute and suggested military action against Iraq.
Bush carried 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 furthermore objected to that one of the biggest establishments in Baghdad had a floor mural with a image of his parent's face that each person had to tread upon.
Investigation Approaches
However it was Cheney who was among the most vociferous supporting striking Iraq, consistently citing intelligence reports that were either thin or totally inaccurate. He supported what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the application of waterboarding and physical pressure.
Addressing a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no useful information had been obtained through the torture, Cheney dismissed the report as "full of crap". He stated to Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to take steps and create procedures to catch the bastards who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it would not recur. That was specifically what they did and they merit a lot of praise."
External Perception
Cheney took pleasure in labels imposed on him by detractors such as the dark character and the sinister presence, and by the concept that he was a shadow power controlling Bush. In the author's 2013 volume 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 shadows that remains unseen come out of his lair? That is a advantageous way to work, truthfully."
Commercial Ties
Controversy over his commercial relationships followed him through his period as second-in-command. Although he had minimal expertise in corporate affairs but established relationships in security, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial petroleum companies, in 1995 as chairman and CEO.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's VP candidate for the executive branch. Debatably, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was granted US deals worth billions.
It made him rich. His annual income during his time at the firm increased from his quarter-million dollars during his time as Pentagon chief to $4.4m. When he resigned in 2000 he had a compensation package worth more than $20m|twenty
