The late US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was considered one of the most powerful holders of that office in US history. While countless vice-presidents were limited to marginal or ceremonial roles, Cheney held enormous sway during the presidency of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was often called as the "actual president".
Bush resented such a characterisation and stated the dynamic was more complicated. He pointed out that Cheney was respectful, always referring to him in public settings as Mr President, while he called him as Dick. Bush questioned even portrayals of their association as a collaboration because it implied that they were peers. In spite of these objections, Cheney viewed the relaxed president malleable on a broad range of policy decisions.
A Aftermath of 9/11
At the head of a group of neo-conservatives that included Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 attack, 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, commanding the shooting down of any unidentified aircraft heading toward the Capitol building.
Cheney said the strikes altered his perspective, making him become focused on revenge. Along with other neo-conservatives, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a invasion of Afghanistan in an effort to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the invasion of Iraq, although there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Controversial Decisions
He expressed no regrets about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis perished, and not about the enhanced interrogation of detainees rounded up after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was based on faulty intelligence circulated by Cheney, was the correct decision. "It represented the right thing to do back then. I believed it at the time and I maintain that stance presently."
Yet during that period, there were opposing views at a senior level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the administration's own delegates to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the post. "I witnessed, as a baseline," he wrote later "clear negligence, carelessness, and recklessness: potentially, falsehoods, unfitness, and corruption."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not solely responsible for the Iraq invasion. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for such action. He had drafted a memorandum outlining scenarios in which US concerns might be threatened (encompassing "access to vital raw materials, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "America should be postured to take unilateral action when collective action cannot be arranged," explicitly referencing defense operations against Iraq.
Bush too had assumed the presidency vaguely intent on carrying out what his predecessor had specifically avoided to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. Subsequent to he had been dismissed by the president, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his intention of lowering America's participation in the Middle East dispute and suggested armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush held a personal grudge against Saddam, convinced he had been responsible for a plot to kill his parent, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore disliked that one of the biggest establishments in Baghdad had a floor mural with a image of his father's face that everyone had to walk over.
Investigation Approaches
Yet it was Cheney who was among the most vociferous behind attacking Iraq, repeatedly referencing information documents that were both thin or entirely inaccurate. He backed what the Bush administration euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the employment of waterboarding and harsh treatment.
Answering a Senate document in 2014 that concluded that no valuable data had come from the interrogation methods, Cheney rejected the conclusions as "loaded with crap". He informed Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to implement measures and create procedures to catch the individuals who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it was not repeated. That was specifically what they did and they deserve a lot of credit."
External Perception
Cheney took pleasure in nicknames given to him by detractors such as the Star Wars villain and the sinister presence, and by the idea that he was a sinister influence controlling Bush. In the author's 2013 publication about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Do I represent the evil genius in the shadows that nobody ever sees leave his hole? It's a advantageous way to function, in fact."
Corporate Connections
Debate over his business interests accompanied him during his tenure as second-in-command. Although he had minimal expertise in commerce but good contacts in military, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's biggest energy corporations, in 1995 as leader and CEO.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's election partner for the White House. Controversially, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was given US contracts totaling multiple billions.
It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly earnings during his time at the firm grew from his $258,394 when he was military head to millions. When he departed in 2000 he had a severance arrangement totaling in excess of $20m|twenty
