The late US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who passed away at the age of 84, was regarded as among the most powerful incumbents of that office in American history. Although many VPs were limited to marginal or ceremonial functions, Cheney exercised enormous power during the administration of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was commonly called as the "true president".
Bush objected to such a characterisation and claimed the dynamic was more complex. He noted that Cheney was courteous, consistently calling him in public settings as President, while he called him as Dick. Bush questioned even characterisations of their relationship as a team because it implied that they were on equal footing. Regardless of such protestations, Cheney found the easygoing president malleable on a broad range of policy decisions.
The Aftermath of 9/11
Leading of a faction of neo-cons that featured military head Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been participating in a gathering at a school in Florida. As Bush headed for a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took command, directing the destruction of any unresponsive aircraft heading toward the Capitol building.
Cheney claimed the strikes altered his perspective, causing him to be determined on revenge. Together with other neo-conservatives, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a invasion of Afghanistan in an effort to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, even though there was little proof of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Controversial Policies
He expressed no regrets about the invasion, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis perished, or about the harsh treatment of individuals apprehended after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was founded on faulty reports repeated by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It represented the right thing to do then. I believed it back then and I maintain that stance now."
But even then, there were opposing views at a senior level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the administration's own delegates to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the post. "I saw, at a minimum," he wrote later "obvious failure, negligence, and unaccountability: in the worst case, falsehoods, unfitness, and dishonesty."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not solely responsible for the Iraq campaign. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for similar measures. He had written a memorandum setting out circumstances in which American interests might be threatened (featuring "obtaining essential resources, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "America should be positioned to act independently when joint efforts prove impossible," specifically citing armed actions against Iraq.
Bush too had entered the Oval Office generally inclined on carrying out what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; remove Saddam. After he had been dismissed by the president, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill recounted 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 regional tensions and suggested military action against Iraq.
Bush bore a individual resentment against Saddam, thinking he had been responsible for a conspiracy to murder his parent, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally objected to that one of the largest hotels in Baghdad had a ground design with a image of his father's countenance that everyone had to walk over.
Interrogation Methods
But it was Cheney who was one of the most outspoken behind striking Iraq, repeatedly citing intelligence reports that were both insubstantial or completely misleading. He endorsed what the Bush government indirectly described as "advanced techniques", the use of waterboarding and torture.
Responding to a Senate document in 2014 that determined that no valuable data had come from the torture, Cheney rejected the conclusions as "riddled with crap". He informed Fox News: "We asked [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 was not repeated. That is precisely what they did and they deserve a lot of recognition."
Public Image
Cheney took pleasure in nicknames given to him by critics such as the Star Wars villain and the dark figure, and by the notion that he was a sinister influence controlling Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 publication about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Am I the evil genius in the corner that remains unseen emerge from his hole? This represents a effective way to function, in fact."
Business Interests
Dispute over his commercial relationships pursued him throughout his time as second-in-command. Even though he had minimal expertise in business but established relationships in security, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's largest energy corporations, in 1995 as leader and top executive.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's running mate for the White House. Controversially, during the military campaign, Halliburton was given US contracts worth substantial sums.
It made him rich. His yearly compensation during his tenure at the firm rose from his quarter-million dollars when he was Pentagon chief to $4.4m. When he departed in 2000 he had a severance arrangement worth more than $20m|twenty
