The former US vice-president Dick Cheney, who has died at the age of 84, was regarded as one of the most powerful occupants of the vice-presidency in US history. While many second-in-commands had to settle for minor or ceremonial functions, Cheney wielded substantial power during the administration of George W Bush, to the point that he was frequently called as the "actual president".
Bush disliked that description and claimed the dynamic was more complicated. He observed that Cheney was respectful, consistently calling him in official appearances as Mr President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush challenged even portrayals of their relationship as a collaboration because it suggested that they were on equal footing. In spite of such protestations, Cheney found the laidback president pliable on a broad range of policy decisions.
A Post-9/11 Era
Leading of a group of conservative hawks that encompassed military head Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been taking part in a meeting at a educational institution in Florida. Whereas Bush traveled to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took command, ordering the shooting down of any non-communicating aircraft nearing the US Capitol.
Cheney claimed the assaults transformed him, making him become determined on retaliation. Together with other conservative figures, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a occupation of Afghanistan in an attempt to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then vigorously pushed for the military action of Iraq, even though there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Disputed Actions
He voiced no apologies about the armed intervention, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis died, or about the harsh treatment of suspects apprehended after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was founded on faulty intelligence echoed by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It proved to be the proper decision to do then. I believed it at the time and I hold that view now."
But even then, there were contrary opinions at a top tier 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 post. "I saw, at a minimum," he wrote later "clear negligence, inaction, and recklessness: potentially, lying, unfitness, and corruption."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not entirely accountable for the Iraq campaign. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had written a document outlining circumstances in which national priorities might be threatened (encompassing "availability of essential resources, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the US should be positioned to take unilateral action when joint efforts cannot be orchestrated," particularly mentioning defense operations against Iraq.
Bush also had arrived in the Oval Office generally inclined on carrying out what his father had specifically avoided to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. After he had been fired by the president, the finance chief Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his objective of reducing America's engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and proposed armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush carried a individual resentment against Saddam, thinking he had been responsible for a conspiracy to kill his parent, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally disliked that one of the biggest establishments in Baghdad had a floor mural with a portrait of his parent's visage that each person had to step on.
Investigation Approaches
Yet it was Cheney who was part of the most vociferous advocating attacking Iraq, repeatedly citing agency briefings that were whether weak or entirely inaccurate. He supported what the Bush administration euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the employment of interrogation method and harsh treatment.
Answering a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no useful information had come from the interrogation methods, Cheney rejected the findings as "loaded with crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to implement measures and put in place programmes to apprehend the perpetrators who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and ensure it was not repeated. That was specifically what they did and they earn a lot of praise."
Public Persona
Cheney took pleasure in monikers assigned to him by opponents such as the Star Wars villain and the sinister presence, and by the idea that he was a sinister influence manipulating Bush. In the journalist's 2013 volume about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Am I the evil genius in the corner that remains unseen emerge from his hole? That is a advantageous way to work, truthfully."
Corporate Connections
Debate over his corporate affiliations followed him through his period as VP. Even though he had minimal expertise in commerce but strong connections in military, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's biggest oil and gas corporations, in 1995 as chairman and top executive.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's election partner for the executive branch. Debatably, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was awarded US contracts totaling substantial sums.
It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly earnings during his tenure at the corporation increased from his previous salary during his time as military head to over four million. When he resigned in 2000 he had a package totaling over $20m|twenty
