The late US VP Dick Cheney, who has died at age 84, was seen as among the most powerful incumbents of that office in American history. Although many vice-presidents had to settle for peripheral or ceremonial roles, Cheney exercised huge sway during the term of George W Bush, so much so that he was frequently called as the "true president".
Bush resented that description and said the connection was more nuanced. He noted that Cheney was courteous, invariably referring to him in public as President, while he called him as Dick. Bush challenged even descriptions of their relationship as a team because it implied that they were on equal footing. Regardless of these objections, Cheney viewed the laidback president malleable on a broad range of governmental choices.
The Aftermath of 9/11
At the head of a contingent of conservative hawks that featured Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted 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 attack, Bush had been attending a gathering at a elementary school in Florida. Whereas Bush made his way to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, ordering the shooting down of any non-communicating planes approaching the US Capitol.
Cheney stated the assaults transformed him, leading him to become determined on retaliation. Together with other conservative figures, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a invasion of Afghanistan in an endeavor to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the military action of Iraq, though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Debated Policies
He showed no remorse about the military campaign, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, or about the waterboarding of detainees rounded up after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was founded on misleading information repeated by Cheney, was the right course of action. "It was the right thing to do back then. I was convinced then and I believe it now."
Yet even then, there were contrary opinions at a senior level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the administration's own representatives to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the post. "I saw, at the very least," he later wrote "obvious failure, carelessness, and recklessness: in the worst case, deception, incompetence, and dishonesty."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not solely accountable for the Iraq military action. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had advocated for comparable steps. He had written a document detailing circumstances in which US concerns might be threatened (encompassing "availability of vital raw materials, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the US should be prepared to act independently when joint efforts cannot be arranged," particularly referencing military moves against Iraq.
Bush additionally had assumed the White House somewhat determined on carrying out what his predecessor had specifically avoided to do in 1991; remove Saddam. After he had been fired by the administration, the finance chief Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his plan of reducing America's engagement in the Middle East dispute and suggested armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush carried a personal grudge against Saddam, thinking he had been involved in 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 biggest accommodations in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a portrait of his predecessor's face that everyone had to tread upon.
Interrogation Methods
However it was Cheney who was one of the most vociferous behind attacking Iraq, consistently citing agency briefings that were either weak or entirely inaccurate. He endorsed what the Bush White House politely called as "intensive questioning", the application of waterboarding and harsh treatment.
Addressing a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no actionable intelligence had resulted from the torture, Cheney rejected the findings as "full of crap". He stated to Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to take steps and create programmes to catch the perpetrators who killed 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 recognition."
Public Image
Cheney reveled in monikers assigned to him by critics such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the idea that he was a dark force controlling Bush. In the journalist's 2013 publication about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Is it me who is the evil genius in the background that operates invisibly come out of his lair? This represents a nice way to operate, actually."
Corporate Connections
Dispute over his commercial relationships accompanied him during his tenure as VP. Even though he had minimal expertise in corporate affairs but strong connections in security, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial petroleum corporations, in 1995 as leader and top executive.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's election partner for the presidency. Controversially, during the military campaign, Halliburton was granted US agreements worth multiple billions.
It made him rich. His annual income during his time at the company increased from his $258,394 when he was defence secretary to $4.4m. When he resigned in 2000 he had a compensation package totaling more than $20m|twenty
