The late US VP Dick Cheney, who died at the age of 84, was regarded as among the most powerful holders of that office in the nation's history. Whereas numerous VPs were limited to minor or ceremonial functions, Cheney exercised huge power during the administration of George W Bush, to the point that he was commonly described as the "actual president".
Bush disliked this portrayal and claimed the connection was more complicated. He noted that Cheney was courteous, consistently calling him in public as the President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush questioned even descriptions of their relationship as a collaboration because it implied that they were on equal footing. In spite of these objections, Cheney viewed the easygoing president accommodating on a whole raft of governmental choices.
A Post-9/11 Era
In charge of a contingent of neo-cons that featured military head Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been attending a meeting at a school in Florida. As Bush made his way to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, commanding the shooting down of any unidentified planes heading toward the Capitol building.
Cheney stated the assaults altered his perspective, making him become focused on retaliation. Along with other neo-cons, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a takeover of Afghanistan in an effort to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the invasion of Iraq, though there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Disputed Decisions
He voiced no apologies about the invasion, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, nor about the enhanced interrogation of individuals rounded up after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was based on inaccurate reports circulated by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It represented the correct action to do then. I believed it at the time and I hold that view now."
However even then, there were dissenting voices at a high level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the government's own delegates to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the role. "I saw, at the very least," he later wrote "true dereliction, inaction, and recklessness: in the worst case, lying, unfitness, and dishonesty."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not solely responsible for the Iraq campaign. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for such action. He had written a memo outlining circumstances in which American interests might be compromised (encompassing "availability of crucial commodities, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the US should be postured to operate alone when collective action cannot be arranged," specifically referencing defense operations against Iraq.
Bush additionally had arrived in the presidency generally inclined on executing what his father had specifically avoided to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. After he had been sacked by the administration, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his plan of reducing America's involvement in the regional tensions and suggested defense operations against Iraq.
Bush held a personal grudge against Saddam, convinced he had been responsible for a plot to murder his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally objected to that one of the largest accommodations in Baghdad had a floor mural with a likeness of his father's face that each person had to step on.
Questioning Techniques
Yet it was Cheney who was one of the most vehement behind attacking Iraq, consistently citing agency briefings that were either weak or completely deceptive. He backed what the Bush administration euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the employment of interrogation method and harsh treatment.
Addressing a Senate analysis in 2014 that found that no useful information had been obtained through the interrogation methods, Cheney rejected the findings as "loaded with crap". He stated to Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to take steps and create programmes to capture the bastards who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it was not repeated. That was specifically what they did and they earn a lot of praise."
Public Persona
Cheney took pleasure in monikers imposed on him by detractors such as Darth Vader and The Prince of Darkness, and by the notion that he was a sinister influence manipulating Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 book about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Do I represent the sinister strategist in the shadows that operates invisibly emerge from his domain? That is a nice way to work, in fact."
Commercial Ties
Dispute over his corporate affiliations accompanied him through his period as second-in-command. Although he had little experience in corporate affairs but good contacts in military, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's largest oil and gas companies, in 1995 as leader and chief executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's running mate for the executive branch. Debatably, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was granted US contracts valued at multiple billions.
It significantly boosted his finances. His annual income during his period at the company rose from his previous salary while defence secretary to millions. When he resigned in 2000 he had a package totaling more than $20m|twenty
