The late US VP Dick Cheney, who has died at the age of 84, was regarded as one of the most influential incumbents of that position in the nation's history. While many second-in-commands had to settle for peripheral or figurehead roles, Cheney wielded enormous influence during the administration of George W Bush, so much so that he was frequently referred to as the "actual president".
Bush resented this portrayal and claimed the dynamic was more complex. He observed that Cheney was courteous, consistently referring to him in official appearances as Mr President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush disputed even descriptions of their partnership as a team because it suggested that they were equals. Despite such protestations, Cheney viewed the laidback president malleable on a whole raft of policy decisions.
The Post-9/11 Era
At the head of a contingent of neo-cons that featured Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been participating in a session at a elementary school in Florida. While Bush made his way to a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, ordering the shooting down of any non-communicating airplanes nearing the government building.
Cheney said the attacks changed him, leading him to become determined on retaliation. Along with other conservative figures, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a invasion of Afghanistan in an attempt to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the invasion of Iraq, although there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Disputed Policies
He showed no remorse about the invasion, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis perished, nor about the harsh treatment of detainees rounded up after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was founded on faulty reports repeated by Cheney, was the right decision. "It proved to be the proper decision to do then. I had faith then and I believe it presently."
However even at the time, there were dissenting voices at a senior level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the administration's own delegates to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the role. "I saw, at a minimum," he later wrote "clear negligence, carelessness, and irresponsibility: in the worst case, lying, ineptitude, and graft."
Broader Context
Cheney was not completely to blame for the Iraq military action. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had composed a document detailing scenarios in which national priorities might be threatened (including "availability of essential resources, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the US should be prepared to take unilateral action when collective action cannot be arranged," explicitly referencing military moves against Iraq.
Bush additionally had assumed the Oval Office generally inclined on carrying out what his predecessor had specifically avoided to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Following he had been fired by the administration, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his objective of diminishing America's involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and proposed armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush held a private grievance against Saddam, convinced he had been involved in a scheme to assassinate his father, 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 father's visage that all visitors had to walk over.
Investigation Approaches
Yet it was Cheney who was one of the most outspoken behind striking Iraq, repeatedly citing intelligence reports that were both thin or totally misleading. He endorsed what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "advanced techniques", the employment of simulated drowning and physical pressure.
Responding to a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no actionable intelligence had come from the interrogation methods, Cheney rejected the conclusions as "riddled with crap". He told Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to implement measures and put in place programmes to catch the perpetrators who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it would not recur. That was specifically what they did and they merit a lot of recognition."
Public Image
Cheney enjoyed nicknames assigned to him by critics such as the dark character and the sinister presence, and by the idea that he was a shadow power directing Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 publication about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Do I represent the evil genius in the background that remains unseen come out of his hole? This represents a effective way to work, in fact."
Commercial Ties
Dispute over his business interests accompanied him through his period as vice-president. Even though he had little experience in commerce but strong connections in security, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest oil and gas conglomerates, in 1995 as chairman and CEO.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's VP candidate for the executive branch. Debatably, during the military campaign, Halliburton was granted US agreements totaling billions.
It significantly boosted his finances. His yearly earnings during his time at the corporation increased from his $258,394 while military head to $4.4m. When he resigned in 2000 he had a severance arrangement valued at more than $20m|twenty
