The deceased US vice-president Dick Cheney, who has died at age 84, was seen as one of the most influential incumbents of the vice-presidency in US history. Whereas many VPs were confined to peripheral or figurehead roles, Cheney wielded huge influence during the administration of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was often described as the "actual president".
Bush objected to such a characterisation and said the connection was more complicated. He noted that Cheney was courteous, consistently addressing him in official appearances as the President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush questioned even characterisations of their relationship as a team because it implied that they were equals. In spite of such protestations, Cheney viewed the easygoing president malleable on a broad range of administrative determinations.
A Post-9/11 Era
Leading of a group of conservative hawks that included military head Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been attending a gathering at a elementary school in Florida. Whereas Bush made his way to a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, directing the shooting down of any non-communicating aircraft heading toward the Capitol building.
Cheney stated the strikes altered his perspective, leading him to become intent on retribution. In conjunction with other conservative figures, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a invasion of Afghanistan in an attempt to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the armed intervention of Iraq, though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Controversial Decisions
He voiced no apologies about the military campaign, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, and not about the enhanced interrogation of suspects rounded up after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was based on misleading intelligence echoed by Cheney, was the proper path to take. "It proved to be the right thing to do at that time. I believed it then and I maintain that stance now."
However even then, there were contrary opinions at a top tier about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the White House's own special envoys to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the position. "I witnessed, at the very least," he later wrote "obvious failure, negligence, and irresponsibility: in the worst case, falsehoods, incompetence, and dishonesty."
Broader Context
Cheney was not completely to blame for the Iraq invasion. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had written a document outlining scenarios in which national priorities might be compromised (featuring "availability of crucial commodities, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the United States should be positioned to take unilateral action when cooperative measures cannot be arranged," explicitly referencing defense operations against Iraq.
Bush too had assumed the White House generally inclined on implementing what his father had specifically avoided to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Following he had been fired by the president, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his objective of diminishing America's participation in the regional tensions and suggested defense operations against Iraq.
Bush bore a private grievance against Saddam, believing he had been responsible for a scheme to kill his parent, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore disliked that one of the biggest establishments in Baghdad had a ground design with a image of his parent's face that everyone had to walk over.
Interrogation Methods
Yet it was Cheney who was one of the most vociferous supporting striking Iraq, repeatedly referencing information documents that were whether insubstantial or completely deceptive. He backed what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "advanced techniques", the employment of waterboarding and physical pressure.
Answering a Senate report in 2014 that determined that no useful information had come from the interrogation methods, Cheney dismissed the conclusions as "riddled with crap". He told Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to implement measures and create programmes to catch the perpetrators who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it never happened again. That's exactly what they did and they deserve a lot of recognition."
External Perception
Cheney took pleasure in nicknames imposed on him by opponents such as the Star Wars villain and The Prince of Darkness, and by the notion that he was a dark force manipulating Bush. In the journalist'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 shadows that operates invisibly emerge from his hole? It's a nice way to operate, actually."
Commercial Ties
Dispute over his business interests followed him during his tenure as second-in-command. Although he had little experience in corporate affairs but good contacts in security, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's biggest energy conglomerates, in 1995 as chairman and CEO.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's VP candidate for the White House. Controversially, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was given US deals worth substantial sums.
It made him rich. His yearly compensation during his tenure at the company grew from his $258,394 during his time as Pentagon chief to millions. When he departed in 2000 he had a package totaling more than $20m|twenty
