The late US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was considered one of the most influential incumbents of the vice-presidency in American history. Whereas countless vice-presidents had to settle for peripheral or figurehead roles, Cheney exercised huge sway during the term of George W Bush, so much so that he was frequently referred to as the "true president".
Bush objected to this portrayal and said the dynamic was more complex. He noted that Cheney was courteous, always addressing him in official appearances as President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush disputed even characterisations of their partnership as a partnership because it implied that they were on equal footing. Regardless of these objections, Cheney considered the laidback president pliable on a wide array of governmental choices.
The Aftermath of 9/11
At the head of a contingent of conservative hawks that featured defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been participating in a meeting at a school in Florida. Whereas Bush headed for a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, ordering the destruction of any unidentified airplanes approaching the government building.
Cheney claimed the attacks transformed him, causing him to be intent on retaliation. Together with other neo-cons, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a occupation of Afghanistan in an attempt to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then vigorously pushed for the invasion of Iraq, even though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Debated Decisions
He voiced no apologies about the invasion, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, or about the harsh treatment of individuals rounded up after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was predicated on inaccurate intelligence echoed by Cheney, was the proper course of action. "It represented the proper decision to do back then. I believed it at the time and I maintain that stance today."
But during that period, there were dissenting voices at a high level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the administration's own representatives to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the role. "I witnessed, as a baseline," he wrote later "obvious failure, inaction, and recklessness: potentially, falsehoods, unfitness, and dishonesty."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not solely to blame for the Iraq military action. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for such action. He had written a memorandum outlining circumstances in which American interests might be compromised (including "availability of crucial commodities, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "the US should be positioned to act independently when cooperative measures cannot be orchestrated," explicitly mentioning defense operations against Iraq.
Bush too had entered the Oval Office somewhat determined on carrying out what his parent had famously refused to do in 1991; topple Saddam. Following he had been fired by the president, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his plan of lowering America's participation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mooted military action against Iraq.
Bush carried a personal grudge against Saddam, thinking he had been behind a plot to kill his father, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He also resented that one of the biggest hotels in Baghdad had a ground design with a likeness of his father's face that each person had to walk over.
Investigation Approaches
Yet it was Cheney who was part of the most vociferous supporting invading Iraq, consistently citing intelligence reports that were either weak or totally inaccurate. He supported what the Bush government euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation", the application of waterboarding and physical pressure.
Responding to a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no valuable data had come from the interrogation methods, Cheney rejected the findings as "full of crap". He told Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to take steps and establish programmes to catch the perpetrators who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it never happened again. That's exactly what they did and they merit a lot of recognition."
External Perception
Cheney took pleasure in monikers assigned to him by detractors such as Darth Vader and the sinister presence, and by the notion that he was a shadow power directing Bush. In the author's 2013 publication about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Do I represent the malevolent mastermind in the corner that nobody ever sees leave his domain? This represents a advantageous way to work, truthfully."
Business Interests
Debate over his corporate affiliations accompanied him throughout his time as VP. While he had little experience in business but established relationships in defence, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest oil and gas corporations, in 1995 as chairman and CEO.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's running mate for the executive branch. Debatably, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was awarded US agreements worth multiple billions.
It significantly boosted his finances. His yearly earnings during his tenure at the company grew from his quarter-million dollars during his time as military head to $4.4m. When he departed in 2000 he had a severance arrangement totaling more than $20m|twenty
