The former US vice-president Dick Cheney, who died at age 84, was seen as arguably the most influential holders of that position in American history. Although countless vice-presidents were limited to peripheral or symbolic positions, Cheney held huge power during the term of George W Bush, to the point that he was often described as the "real president".
Bush resented this portrayal and stated the relationship was more complicated. He observed that Cheney was respectful, invariably referring to him in official appearances as President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush questioned even descriptions of their association as a partnership because it implied that they were equals. Despite these objections, Cheney considered the laidback president pliable on a broad range of governmental choices.
The Period Following the Attacks
At the head of a contingent of conservative hawks that included military head Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been attending a session at a elementary school in Florida. As Bush headed for a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, directing the shooting down of any non-communicating aircraft nearing the Capitol building.
Cheney claimed the assaults transformed him, making him become determined on retribution. Along with other neo-conservatives, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a occupation of Afghanistan in an attempt to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the military action of Iraq, though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Controversial Actions
He expressed no regrets about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis died, and not about the waterboarding of detainees rounded up after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was based on misleading intelligence echoed by Cheney, was the correct path to take. "It proved to be the correct action to do back then. I believed it back then and I believe it now."
Yet even then, there were opposing views at a senior level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the White House's own representatives to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the role. "I witnessed, as a baseline," he later wrote "clear negligence, carelessness, and recklessness: in the worst case, falsehoods, ineptitude, and corruption."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not completely accountable for the Iraq military action. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had composed a memorandum setting out situations in which national priorities might be compromised (including "obtaining vital raw materials, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "America should be postured to operate alone when joint efforts cannot be arranged," explicitly referencing military moves against Iraq.
Bush additionally had assumed the Oval Office vaguely intent on carrying out what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; topple Saddam. Following he had been fired by the administration, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his objective of lowering America's involvement in the regional tensions and suggested defense operations against Iraq.
Bush carried a individual resentment against Saddam, thinking he had been responsible for a conspiracy to murder his father, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore disliked that one of the largest accommodations in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a portrait of his father's countenance that each person had to walk over.
Investigation Approaches
But it was Cheney who was among the most vehement supporting attacking Iraq, consistently quoting intelligence reports that were either thin or totally deceptive. He endorsed what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation", the use of simulated drowning and physical pressure.
Answering a Senate report in 2014 that concluded that no valuable data had resulted from the interrogation methods, Cheney disregarded the findings as "full of crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to implement measures and create procedures to capture the bastards who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it never happened again. That was specifically what they did and they earn a lot of credit."
External Perception
Cheney enjoyed nicknames given to him by detractors such as the Star Wars villain and the sinister presence, and by the notion that he was a shadow power directing Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 volume about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Do I represent the sinister strategist in the background that operates invisibly come out of his domain? That is a advantageous way to work, truthfully."
Business Interests
Debate over his corporate affiliations followed him through his period as second-in-command. Even though he had little experience in business but established relationships in security, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's biggest energy corporations, in 1995 as chairman and top executive.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's election partner for the White House. Contentiously, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was given US agreements worth substantial sums.
It made him rich. His annual income during his period at the company grew from his quarter-million dollars when he was defence secretary to $4.4m. When he left in 2000 he had a severance arrangement valued at in excess of $20m|twenty
