The late US vice-president Dick Cheney, who passed away at the age of 84, was seen as one of the most significant occupants of the vice-presidency in US history. Although countless vice-presidents were confined to minor or ceremonial functions, Cheney exercised substantial influence during the presidency of George W Bush, to the point that he was frequently described as the "true president".
Bush disliked such a characterisation and said the connection was more nuanced. He pointed out that Cheney was respectful, invariably referring to him in official appearances as the President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush disputed even portrayals of their partnership as a team because it indicated that they were peers. Regardless of these denials, Cheney found the laidback president pliable on a broad range of policy decisions.
The Aftermath of 9/11
Leading of a group of neo-cons that featured military head Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in response to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been taking part in a meeting at a elementary school in Florida. While Bush headed for a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took command, directing the shooting down of any unresponsive airplanes nearing the government building.
Cheney stated the assaults changed him, leading him to become determined on retaliation. Together with other neo-conservatives, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a takeover of Afghanistan in an attempt to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the military action of Iraq, even though there was little proof of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Controversial Actions
He showed no remorse about the military campaign, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis died, nor about the harsh treatment of suspects apprehended after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was predicated on misleading intelligence echoed by Cheney, was the correct path to take. "It was the right thing to do then. I was convinced then and I maintain that stance presently."
Yet even at the time, there were dissenting voices at a senior level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the White House's own representatives to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the post. "I observed, as a baseline," he wrote later "clear negligence, negligence, and unaccountability: in the worst case, deception, ineptitude, and graft."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not completely responsible for the Iraq invasion. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had advocated for such action. He had composed a memo detailing scenarios in which American interests might be threatened (featuring "obtaining vital raw materials, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "America should be prepared to act independently when cooperative measures cannot be arranged," specifically citing defense operations against Iraq.
Bush additionally had assumed the White House generally inclined on carrying out what his predecessor had famously refused to do in 1991; topple Saddam. After he had been sacked by the president, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his intention of diminishing America's engagement in the Middle East dispute and proposed armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush bore a personal grudge against Saddam, thinking he had been involved in a conspiracy to kill his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally objected to that one of the largest accommodations in Baghdad had a ground design with a likeness of his predecessor's face that all visitors had to walk over.
Investigation Approaches
However it was Cheney who was part of the most vociferous behind attacking Iraq, consistently citing intelligence reports that were either insubstantial or totally inaccurate. He backed what the Bush government politely called as "advanced techniques", the employment of waterboarding and torture.
Responding to a Senate report in 2014 that determined that no useful information had come from the torture, Cheney dismissed the findings as "full of crap". He told Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to establish protocols and put in place procedures to capture the individuals who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it would not recur. That is precisely what they did and they deserve a lot of praise."
Public Persona
Cheney reveled in monikers assigned to him by critics such as Darth Vader and the dark figure, and by the notion that he was a dark force controlling Bush. In the journalist's 2013 book about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Am I the evil genius in the shadows that nobody ever sees emerge from his domain? It's a nice way to work, in fact."
Business Interests
Dispute over his corporate affiliations pursued him throughout his time as second-in-command. Although he had little experience in corporate affairs but strong connections in defence, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest petroleum companies, in 1995 as chairman and top executive.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's VP candidate for the executive branch. Contentiously, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was awarded US contracts worth multiple billions.
It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly compensation during his tenure at the company increased from his $258,394 when he was military head to over four million. When he left in 2000 he had a package totaling over $20m|twenty
