The deceased US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at the age of 84, was considered one of the most significant holders of that office in the nation's history. Whereas countless vice-presidents were confined to minor or ceremonial positions, Cheney held substantial sway during the term of George W Bush, so much so that he was often described as the "actual president".
Bush objected to that description and said the dynamic was more complicated. He noted that Cheney was courteous, invariably referring to him in public settings as the President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush challenged even descriptions of their association as a team because it implied that they were equals. Regardless of these objections, Cheney found the easygoing president accommodating on a whole raft of administrative determinations.
A Post-9/11 Era
At the head of a faction of conservative hawks that encompassed Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been participating in a session at a educational institution in Florida. As Bush headed for a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney took command, directing the shooting down of any unidentified planes nearing the Capitol building.
Cheney said the attacks changed him, leading him to become focused on retribution. In conjunction with other neo-conservatives, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a invasion of Afghanistan in an effort to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the invasion of Iraq, even though there was little proof of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Debated Policies
He expressed no regrets about the military campaign, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis died, or about the harsh treatment of detainees captured after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was predicated on misleading reports echoed by Cheney, was the proper course of action. "It was the right thing to do back then. I was convinced at the time and I maintain that stance now."
But 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 area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the role. "I witnessed, at the very least," he later wrote "obvious failure, carelessness, and recklessness: at worst, deception, ineptitude, and graft."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not completely accountable for the Iraq invasion. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for such action. He had composed a memorandum setting out situations in which US concerns might be compromised (encompassing "access to essential resources, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the United States should be positioned to operate alone when collective action cannot be orchestrated," explicitly referencing military moves against Iraq.
Bush additionally had arrived in the Oval Office somewhat determined on executing what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; remove Saddam. After he had been sacked by the White House, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his intention of reducing America's involvement in the Middle East dispute and proposed armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush bore a individual resentment against Saddam, convinced he had been responsible for a scheme to murder his father, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally resented that one of the most prominent accommodations in Baghdad had a ground design with a portrait of his father's face that each person had to tread upon.
Investigation Approaches
Yet it was Cheney who was one of the most outspoken supporting attacking Iraq, frequently referencing agency briefings that were either thin or entirely misleading. He endorsed what the Bush government euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the application of interrogation method and physical pressure.
Answering a Senate report in 2014 that found that no valuable data had resulted from the torture, Cheney dismissed the conclusions as "loaded with crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to take steps and create initiatives to capture the perpetrators who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it never happened again. That was specifically what they did and they merit a lot of recognition."
External Perception
Cheney took pleasure in nicknames imposed on him by detractors such as the Star Wars villain and The Prince of Darkness, and by the idea that he was a shadow power directing Bush. In the journalist's 2013 volume about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Do I represent the malevolent mastermind in the shadows that nobody ever sees emerge from his lair? It's a nice way to operate, in fact."
Commercial Ties
Controversy over his business interests followed him throughout his time as VP. Although he had little experience in business but established relationships in security, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's largest petroleum companies, in 1995 as leader and chief executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's VP candidate for the White House. Debatably, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was granted US deals worth billions.
It made him rich. His yearly compensation during his tenure at the firm rose from his $258,394 during his time as Pentagon chief to over four million. When he resigned in 2000 he had a severance arrangement totaling over $20m|twenty
