The former US vice-president Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was seen as one of the most influential holders of that office in the nation's history. While numerous VPs were limited to minor or figurehead positions, Cheney held substantial sway during the administration of George W Bush, to the point that he was frequently called as the "real president".
Bush resented that description and claimed the dynamic was more complicated. He pointed out that Cheney was courteous, invariably calling him in public settings as the President, while he called him as Dick. Bush questioned even descriptions of their relationship as a partnership because it suggested that they were on equal footing. Despite these denials, Cheney viewed the relaxed president pliable on a wide array of policy decisions.
The Period Following the Attacks
Leading of a faction of conservative hawks that featured Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been attending a session at a school in Florida. As Bush headed for a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, ordering the shooting down of any unresponsive planes approaching the Capitol building.
Cheney stated the strikes altered his perspective, causing him to be focused on revenge. Together with other neo-cons, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a takeover of Afghanistan in an endeavor to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the invasion of Iraq, although there was little proof of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Controversial Decisions
He expressed no regrets about the military campaign, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis perished, and not about the enhanced interrogation of detainees rounded up after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was predicated on misleading reports circulated by Cheney, was the correct path to take. "It proved to be the right thing to do then. I believed it at the time and I hold that view presently."
However even at the time, there were contrary opinions at a high level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the administration's own delegates to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the position. "I saw, at the very least," he later wrote "clear negligence, negligence, and unaccountability: in the worst case, deception, unfitness, and graft."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not completely accountable for the Iraq military action. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had written a document outlining circumstances in which US concerns might be threatened (encompassing "obtaining essential resources, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the US should be positioned to operate alone when collective action prove impossible," explicitly mentioning defense operations against Iraq.
Bush also had assumed the Oval Office generally inclined on executing what his parent had famously refused to do in 1991; topple Saddam. After he had been dismissed by the administration, the finance chief Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his intention of diminishing America's participation in the regional tensions and mooted armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush held a private grievance against Saddam, thinking he had been behind a conspiracy to murder his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore objected to that one of the biggest hotels in Baghdad had a ground design with a image of his predecessor's face that everyone had to step on.
Interrogation Methods
Yet it was Cheney who was one of the most vociferous supporting striking Iraq, consistently citing information documents that were both thin or completely inaccurate. He endorsed what the Bush administration politely called as "advanced techniques", the use of waterboarding and torture.
Answering a Senate document in 2014 that concluded that no actionable intelligence had come from the harsh techniques, Cheney rejected the report as "loaded with crap". He told Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to establish protocols and put in place initiatives to capture the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it never happened again. That was specifically what they did and they merit a lot of praise."
Public Persona
Cheney took pleasure in labels imposed on him by critics such as Darth Vader and the sinister presence, and by the notion that he was a sinister influence directing Bush. In the author's 2013 publication about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Am I the malevolent mastermind in the background that operates invisibly come out of his domain? This represents a nice way to operate, actually."
Business Interests
Controversy over his business interests followed him during his tenure as second-in-command. Although he had little experience in business but good contacts in military, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's largest oil and gas conglomerates, in 1995 as chairman and top executive.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's election partner for the executive branch. Contentiously, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was awarded US deals valued at substantial sums.
It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly compensation during his time at the firm grew from his $258,394 during his time as military head to $4.4m. When he resigned in 2000 he had a severance arrangement totaling in excess of $20m|twenty
