The late US vice-president Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was seen as one of the most powerful incumbents of that position in American history. Whereas many second-in-commands had to settle for peripheral or symbolic positions, Cheney held enormous power during the presidency of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was often referred to as the "real president".
Bush resented this portrayal and said the dynamic was more complex. He noted that Cheney was courteous, consistently addressing him in public as the President, while he called him as Dick. Bush challenged even portrayals of their relationship as a partnership because it implied that they were peers. Despite such protestations, Cheney found the relaxed president accommodating on a wide array of governmental choices.
The Period Following the Attacks
At the head of a faction of neo-cons that encompassed defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in answer 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 school in Florida. Whereas Bush made his way to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, commanding the destruction of any unidentified airplanes approaching the US Capitol.
Cheney claimed the attacks transformed him, leading him to become intent on revenge. Along with other neo-conservatives, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a takeover of Afghanistan in an endeavor to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the military action of Iraq, though there was little proof of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Disputed Decisions
He showed no remorse about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis died, and not about the enhanced interrogation of individuals captured after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was predicated on faulty information circulated by Cheney, was the proper path to take. "It represented the correct action to do back then. I was convinced at the time and I maintain that stance presently."
But even then, there were contrary opinions at a high level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the government's own delegates to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the role. "I saw, at a minimum," he later wrote "obvious failure, carelessness, and recklessness: in the worst case, falsehoods, incompetence, and dishonesty."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not solely responsible for the Iraq invasion. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for similar measures. He had drafted a document detailing scenarios in which national priorities might be endangered (encompassing "obtaining essential resources, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "the US should be prepared to take unilateral action when collective action cannot be arranged," specifically mentioning armed actions against Iraq.
Bush also had arrived in the Oval Office vaguely intent on implementing what his father had notably declined to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Subsequent to he had been fired by the administration, the finance chief Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his intention of diminishing America's involvement in the Middle East dispute and suggested defense operations against Iraq.
Bush bore a individual resentment against Saddam, believing he had been behind a plot to kill his father, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He also disliked that one of the largest hotels in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his parent's face that all visitors had to walk over.
Interrogation Methods
But it was Cheney who was part of the most vehement supporting striking Iraq, frequently citing agency briefings that were whether weak or totally inaccurate. He endorsed what the Bush administration politely called as "enhanced interrogation", the employment of interrogation method and torture.
Answering a Senate report in 2014 that concluded that no actionable intelligence had come from the torture, Cheney dismissed the findings as "loaded with crap". He told Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to take steps and establish procedures to apprehend the individuals who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it was not repeated. That's exactly what they did and they deserve a lot of praise."
External Perception
Cheney reveled in nicknames imposed on him by opponents such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the idea that he was a dark force directing Bush. In the author's 2013 volume about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Do I represent the sinister strategist in the corner that operates invisibly emerge from his domain? That is a effective way to operate, in fact."
Commercial Ties
Controversy over his corporate affiliations accompanied him during his tenure as vice-president. While he had limited background in commerce but established relationships in military, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's largest petroleum corporations, in 1995 as chair and CEO.
In 2000 he became Bush's election partner for the presidency. Contentiously, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was given US deals valued at multiple billions.
It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly compensation during his period at the firm increased from his $258,394 while defence secretary to over four million. When he left in 2000 he had a severance arrangement worth in excess of $20m|twenty
