The late US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at the age of 84, was seen as among the most significant incumbents of that position in American history. Whereas many VPs were limited to minor or ceremonial functions, Cheney held substantial power during the administration of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was commonly called as the "actual president".
Bush disliked such a characterisation and claimed the relationship was more complicated. He observed that Cheney was courteous, invariably referring to him in public as President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush questioned even descriptions of their relationship as a collaboration because it indicated that they were on equal footing. Despite these denials, Cheney found the relaxed president pliable on a wide array of policy decisions.
The Period Following the Attacks
In charge of a faction of neo-conservatives that featured 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. At the time of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been attending a meeting at a educational institution in Florida. Whereas Bush traveled to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took command, ordering the shooting down of any unidentified airplanes approaching the US Capitol.
Cheney claimed the assaults changed him, making him become determined on retribution. Together with other neo-cons, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a occupation of Afghanistan in an effort to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, even though there was little proof of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Controversial Actions
He showed no remorse about the armed intervention, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis died, and not about the waterboarding of detainees apprehended after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was founded on faulty reports repeated by Cheney, was the right course of action. "It represented the right thing to do back then. I believed it back then and I maintain that stance presently."
However even then, there were opposing views at a top tier about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the government's own special envoys to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the position. "I witnessed, at a minimum," he wrote later "obvious failure, inaction, and unaccountability: potentially, falsehoods, incompetence, and corruption."
Broader Context
Cheney was not completely accountable for the Iraq invasion. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for such action. He had written a memorandum detailing scenarios in which US concerns might be endangered (including "availability of vital raw materials, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the US should be postured to act independently when collective action cannot be arranged," explicitly citing armed actions against Iraq.
Bush additionally had assumed the Oval Office somewhat determined on implementing what his parent had specifically avoided to do in 1991; topple Saddam. Subsequent to he had been dismissed by the White House, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his plan of lowering America's involvement in the Middle East dispute and mooted armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush held a private grievance against Saddam, believing he had been responsible for a scheme to kill his parent, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally objected to that one of the most prominent accommodations in Baghdad had a floor mural with a likeness of his predecessor's face that each person had to walk over.
Investigation Approaches
However it was Cheney who was among the most outspoken advocating striking Iraq, repeatedly referencing agency briefings that were both weak or entirely inaccurate. He endorsed what the Bush government indirectly described as "enhanced interrogation", the employment of interrogation method and harsh treatment.
Answering a Senate document in 2014 that determined that no valuable data had come from the harsh techniques, Cheney dismissed the report as "loaded with crap". He stated to Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to take steps and establish procedures to capture the bastards who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and ensure it was not repeated. That's exactly what they did and they deserve a lot of credit."
External Perception
Cheney took pleasure in labels imposed on him by critics such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the idea that he was a sinister influence manipulating Bush. In the author's 2013 book about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Do I represent the sinister strategist in the corner that nobody ever sees leave his domain? That is a nice way to function, actually."
Corporate Connections
Dispute over his corporate affiliations accompanied him through his period as VP. Even though he had little experience in business but established relationships in security, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial petroleum conglomerates, in 1995 as leader and CEO.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's VP candidate for the executive branch. Controversially, during the military campaign, Halliburton was given US deals worth substantial sums.
It made him rich. His annual income during his tenure at the company grew from his previous salary when he was Pentagon chief to millions. When he left in 2000 he had a compensation package valued at in excess of $20m|twenty
