The deceased US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who passed away at the age of 84, was seen as arguably the most influential occupants of that position in US history. While numerous vice-presidents were limited to marginal or symbolic roles, Cheney wielded enormous power during the term of George W Bush, to the point that he was often referred to as the "true president".
Bush disliked such a characterisation and claimed the dynamic was more nuanced. He observed that Cheney was courteous, consistently calling him in official appearances as the President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush challenged even characterisations of their association as a partnership because it indicated that they were peers. Despite such protestations, Cheney found the easygoing president accommodating on a broad range of administrative determinations.
The Post-9/11 Era
Leading of a faction of neo-cons that encompassed military head Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been participating in a meeting at a school in Florida. As Bush made his way to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, ordering the shooting down of any non-communicating planes approaching the US Capitol.
Cheney stated the assaults changed him, leading him to become focused on retaliation. In conjunction with other conservative figures, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a takeover of Afghanistan in an attempt to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the invasion of Iraq, although there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Debated Decisions
He expressed no regrets about the armed intervention, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, nor about the waterboarding of suspects captured after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was based on misleading reports circulated by Cheney, was the right decision. "It represented the right thing to do then. I had faith back then and I maintain that stance now."
But even at the time, there were opposing views at a senior level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the administration's own representatives to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the role. "I saw, at a minimum," he wrote later "clear negligence, carelessness, and unaccountability: potentially, lying, unfitness, and graft."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not solely responsible for the Iraq campaign. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had advocated for such action. He had composed a document setting out scenarios in which national priorities might be endangered (encompassing "access to vital raw materials, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "America should be positioned to act independently when joint efforts prove impossible," explicitly referencing armed actions against Iraq.
Bush also had assumed the White House vaguely intent on carrying out what his parent had specifically avoided to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. Following he had been sacked by the administration, the finance chief Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his plan of lowering America's involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and proposed armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush carried a private grievance against Saddam, believing he had been responsible for a scheme to murder his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore resented that one of the most prominent accommodations in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a portrait of his predecessor's countenance that each person had to tread upon.
Investigation Approaches
However it was Cheney who was part of the most outspoken advocating striking Iraq, repeatedly referencing intelligence reports that were whether weak or entirely deceptive. He backed what the Bush government politely called as "intensive questioning", the employment of waterboarding and torture.
Answering a Senate report in 2014 that found that no valuable data had resulted from the torture, Cheney rejected the report as "full of crap". He told Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to take steps and create procedures to capture the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it would not recur. That's exactly what they did and they deserve a lot of credit."
External Perception
Cheney took pleasure in monikers assigned to him by detractors such as the Star Wars villain and the sinister presence, and by the idea that he was a sinister influence manipulating Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 volume about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Am I the sinister strategist in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his lair? That is a effective way to function, in fact."
Business Interests
Debate over his corporate affiliations followed him during his tenure as VP. Although he had limited background in business but good contacts in security, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial petroleum corporations, in 1995 as chair and chief executive.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's VP candidate for the executive branch. Contentiously, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was awarded US contracts valued at substantial sums.
It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly compensation during his period at the company increased from his previous salary while defence secretary to $4.4m. When he resigned in 2000 he had a severance arrangement valued at more than $20m|twenty
