The late US VP Dick Cheney, who died at age 84, was seen as arguably the most significant occupants of that position in American history. Although many VPs had to settle for marginal or ceremonial positions, Cheney held substantial sway during the administration of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was often called as the "actual president".
Bush objected to such a characterisation and claimed the relationship was more nuanced. He noted that Cheney was deferential, invariably addressing him in official appearances as President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush disputed even portrayals of their association as a partnership because it indicated that they were equals. Regardless of such protestations, Cheney found the easygoing president accommodating on a whole raft of policy decisions.
The Period Following the Attacks
At the head of a group of neo-cons that featured military head Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been attending a session at a school in Florida. Whereas Bush traveled to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, commanding the downing of any non-communicating aircraft heading toward the Capitol building.
Cheney claimed the strikes changed him, causing him to be focused on retaliation. In conjunction with other neo-cons, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a invasion of Afghanistan in an endeavor to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the invasion of Iraq, although there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Disputed Policies
He voiced no apologies about the armed intervention, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis perished, or about the waterboarding of individuals rounded up after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was founded on faulty intelligence circulated by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It represented the right thing to do then. I believed it then and I maintain that stance today."
Yet even then, there were opposing views at a senior level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the administration's own representatives to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the position. "I observed, at a minimum," he later wrote "true dereliction, inaction, and irresponsibility: in the worst case, deception, incompetence, and graft."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not completely to blame for the Iraq campaign. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for such action. He had written a memorandum detailing situations in which national priorities might be compromised (encompassing "access to vital raw materials, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the US should be positioned to take unilateral action when collective action prove impossible," explicitly citing defense operations against Iraq.
Bush too had entered the White House somewhat determined on carrying out what his father had notably declined to do in 1991; topple Saddam. Subsequent to he had been fired by the president, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his objective of reducing America's participation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and suggested armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush bore a personal grudge against Saddam, believing he had been responsible for a plot to assassinate his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore objected to that one of the most prominent establishments in Baghdad had a ground design with a image of his parent's face that each person had to step on.
Questioning Techniques
However it was Cheney who was part of the most vehement supporting attacking Iraq, consistently referencing agency briefings that were whether weak or entirely deceptive. He backed what the Bush White House indirectly described as "enhanced interrogation", the employment of waterboarding and torture.
Responding to a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no valuable data had been obtained through the torture, Cheney dismissed the conclusions as "riddled with crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to establish protocols and put in place programmes to catch the perpetrators who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it was not repeated. That was specifically what they did and they earn a lot of credit."
External Perception
Cheney enjoyed nicknames assigned to him by critics such as the dark character and The Prince of Darkness, and by the idea that he was a dark force controlling Bush. In the author's 2013 book about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Do I represent the malevolent mastermind in the corner that nobody ever sees leave his lair? That is a advantageous way to work, truthfully."
Commercial Ties
Debate over his business interests followed him through his period as vice-president. Although he had minimal expertise in business but strong connections in defence, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's largest energy conglomerates, in 1995 as leader and top executive.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's VP candidate for the presidency. Contentiously, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was awarded US deals valued at billions.
It made him rich. His annual income during his tenure at the corporation increased from his previous salary while Pentagon chief to over four million. When he left in 2000 he had a severance arrangement valued at in excess of $20m|twenty
