The deceased US vice-president Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was seen as one of the most influential occupants of that position in US history. Whereas countless VPs had to settle for peripheral or figurehead positions, Cheney held substantial influence during the presidency of George W Bush, so much so that he was often described as the "true president".
Bush resented such a characterisation and stated the relationship was more nuanced. He observed that Cheney was respectful, invariably calling him in public as Mr President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush challenged even descriptions of their partnership as a team because it implied that they were on equal footing. In spite of these denials, Cheney viewed the easygoing president pliable on a whole raft of governmental choices.
The Aftermath of 9/11
At the head of a group of neo-conservatives that featured defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been attending a meeting at a school in Florida. As Bush made his way to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took command, commanding the shooting down of any non-communicating aircraft nearing the US Capitol.
Cheney said the assaults transformed him, leading him to become determined on retaliation. In conjunction with other conservative figures, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a takeover of Afghanistan in an effort to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, although there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Disputed Decisions
He expressed no regrets about the military campaign, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis perished, nor about the enhanced interrogation of detainees apprehended after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was predicated on faulty intelligence circulated by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It was the proper decision to do back then. I believed it then and I believe it now."
However during that period, there were opposing views at a high level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the government's own representatives to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the role. "I witnessed, at a minimum," he later wrote "obvious failure, carelessness, and unaccountability: potentially, falsehoods, ineptitude, and dishonesty."
Broader Context
Cheney was not entirely responsible for the Iraq campaign. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had advocated for comparable steps. He had written a document detailing 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 cooperative measures prove impossible," particularly mentioning defense operations against Iraq.
Bush additionally had entered the presidency somewhat determined on carrying out what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. After he had been dismissed by the administration, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his objective of reducing America's participation in the Middle East dispute and mooted armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush held a individual resentment against Saddam, convinced he had been behind a scheme to murder his father, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He also disliked that one of the biggest hotels in Baghdad had a floor mural with a likeness of his predecessor's visage that each person had to tread upon.
Investigation Approaches
But it was Cheney who was part of the most outspoken supporting attacking Iraq, consistently citing information documents that were either weak or completely misleading. He backed what the Bush administration euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation", the use of interrogation method and harsh treatment.
Answering a Senate report in 2014 that determined that no valuable data had resulted from the interrogation methods, Cheney dismissed the report as "riddled with crap". He informed Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to take steps and put in place programmes to capture the individuals who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it was not repeated. That was specifically what they did and they deserve a lot of credit."
Public Image
Cheney took pleasure in nicknames assigned to him by detractors such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the notion that he was a shadow power controlling Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 publication about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Is it me who is the malevolent mastermind in the background that nobody ever sees come out of his domain? That is a nice way to function, in fact."
Commercial Ties
Debate over his corporate affiliations pursued him during his tenure as vice-president. While he had little experience in business but strong connections in security, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's biggest oil and gas corporations, in 1995 as chairman and CEO.
In 2000 he became Bush's running mate for the presidency. Controversially, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was granted US agreements worth billions.
It made him rich. His yearly compensation during his tenure at the corporation increased from his $258,394 when he was defence secretary to millions. When he left in 2000 he had a compensation package totaling in excess of $20m|twenty
