The deceased US vice-president Dick Cheney, who passed away at the age of 84, was considered arguably the most powerful holders of that office in the nation's history. Whereas countless VPs were confined to peripheral or ceremonial roles, Cheney wielded enormous power during the administration of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was commonly referred to as the "real president".
Bush disliked such a characterisation and claimed the relationship was more nuanced. He pointed out that Cheney was respectful, invariably calling him in public as President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush disputed even characterisations of their relationship as a partnership because it suggested that they were equals. Regardless of these objections, Cheney viewed the relaxed president malleable on a whole raft of policy decisions.
The Post-9/11 Era
At the head of a faction of neo-cons that featured defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been attending a gathering at a educational institution in Florida. As Bush made his way to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, ordering the shooting down of any unidentified airplanes nearing the US Capitol.
Cheney claimed the strikes transformed him, leading him to become focused on retaliation. In conjunction with other conservative figures, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a invasion of Afghanistan in an effort to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then vigorously pushed for the military action of Iraq, even though there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Controversial Decisions
He showed no remorse about the invasion, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis perished, nor about the enhanced interrogation of detainees rounded up after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was based on inaccurate reports echoed by Cheney, was the correct path to take. "It proved to be the proper decision to do then. I believed it then and I hold that view presently."
But even then, there were dissenting voices at a top tier about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the government's own representatives to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the position. "I observed, at a minimum," he wrote later "obvious failure, carelessness, and recklessness: potentially, lying, unfitness, and graft."
Broader Context
Cheney was not entirely accountable for the Iraq invasion. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had drafted a memo outlining circumstances in which US concerns might be endangered (including "availability of essential resources, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the United States should be positioned to operate alone when collective action cannot be arranged," specifically mentioning military moves against Iraq.
Bush too had entered the Oval Office generally inclined on executing what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; topple Saddam. After he had been sacked by the president, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his plan of diminishing America's participation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mooted armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush bore a individual resentment against Saddam, thinking he had been behind a scheme to murder his parent, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally objected to that one of the biggest accommodations in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a image of his father's visage that all visitors had to step on.
Questioning Techniques
But it was Cheney who was part of the most vehement behind invading Iraq, consistently quoting information documents that were either insubstantial or completely misleading. He endorsed what the Bush White House politely called as "enhanced interrogation", the use of waterboarding and physical pressure.
Answering a Senate analysis in 2014 that determined that no valuable data had come from the torture, Cheney rejected the report as "loaded with crap". He told Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to establish protocols and put in place procedures to catch the bastards who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it was not repeated. That is precisely what they did and they deserve a lot of recognition."
Public Image
Cheney reveled in monikers assigned to him by opponents such as Darth Vader and The Prince of Darkness, and by the concept that he was a dark force controlling Bush. In the journalist's 2013 book about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Am I the malevolent mastermind in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his domain? That is a nice way to function, truthfully."
Commercial Ties
Controversy over his commercial relationships pursued him throughout his time as vice-president. Even though he had limited background in corporate affairs but established relationships in military, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's biggest petroleum corporations, in 1995 as chairman and CEO.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's running mate for the presidency. Contentiously, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was given US deals valued at multiple billions.
It significantly boosted his finances. His annual income during his tenure at the firm grew from his $258,394 during his time as military head to over four million. When he resigned in 2000 he had a severance arrangement totaling in excess of $20m|twenty
