The former US vice-president Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was seen as among the most powerful holders of the vice-presidency in US history. Although numerous VPs had to settle for marginal or figurehead positions, Cheney wielded substantial power during the presidency of George W Bush, so much so that he was commonly called as the "real president".
Bush disliked that description and claimed the connection was more complex. He observed that Cheney was respectful, invariably addressing him in official appearances as the President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush challenged even portrayals of their relationship as a partnership because it suggested that they were peers. Regardless of these objections, Cheney found the relaxed president malleable on a wide array of administrative determinations.
A Post-9/11 Era
Leading of a group of neo-conservatives that included Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been attending a gathering at a school in Florida. As Bush headed for a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took command, commanding the shooting down of any unresponsive aircraft nearing the Capitol building.
Cheney claimed the attacks transformed him, making him become intent on revenge. In conjunction with other conservative figures, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a takeover of Afghanistan in an attempt to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the military action of Iraq, even though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Debated Actions
He expressed no regrets about the invasion, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, and not about the enhanced interrogation of individuals rounded up after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was founded on faulty intelligence repeated by Cheney, was the proper course of action. "It represented the correct action to do at that time. I believed it back then and I hold that view today."
However even then, there were opposing views at a high level 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 saw, at a minimum," he subsequently stated "obvious failure, inaction, and recklessness: at worst, lying, unfitness, and graft."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not solely to blame for the Iraq invasion. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had written a memorandum detailing situations in which US concerns might be threatened (including "obtaining vital raw materials, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the US should be prepared to operate alone when cooperative measures cannot be orchestrated," particularly citing armed actions against Iraq.
Bush also had assumed the White House somewhat determined on carrying out what his parent had specifically avoided to do in 1991; topple Saddam. Following he had been fired by the White House, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his objective of diminishing America's engagement in the Middle East dispute and proposed military action against Iraq.
Bush carried a private grievance against Saddam, convinced he had been responsible for a conspiracy to assassinate his parent, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally resented that one of the largest hotels in Baghdad had a floor mural with a likeness of his father's visage that all visitors had to walk over.
Investigation Approaches
Yet it was Cheney who was part of the most vociferous behind striking Iraq, consistently citing intelligence reports that were both thin or totally misleading. He supported what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "advanced techniques", the use of interrogation method and physical pressure.
Answering a Senate document in 2014 that determined that no actionable intelligence had come from the interrogation methods, Cheney disregarded the conclusions as "full of crap". He told Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to implement measures and establish initiatives to capture the individuals who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it would not recur. That's exactly what they did and they merit a lot of credit."
External Perception
Cheney took pleasure in labels assigned to him by critics such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the idea that he was a shadow power manipulating Bush. In the author's 2013 volume about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Do I represent the sinister strategist in the background that remains unseen come out of his lair? This represents a effective way to operate, actually."
Commercial Ties
Debate over his commercial relationships accompanied him through his period as vice-president. Even though he had limited background in commerce but good contacts in defence, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest oil and gas corporations, in 1995 as chairman and chief executive.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's election partner for the presidency. Controversially, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was granted US agreements valued at billions.
It significantly boosted his finances. His annual income during his period at the firm increased from his $258,394 when he was defence secretary to $4.4m. When he resigned in 2000 he had a severance arrangement totaling over $20m|twenty
