The deceased US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was seen as among the most influential incumbents of that position in the nation's history. Although many vice-presidents had to settle for marginal or symbolic functions, Cheney held huge influence during the term of George W Bush, so much so that he was frequently described as the "actual president".
Bush disliked this portrayal and said the connection was more nuanced. He observed that Cheney was respectful, consistently calling him in public as the President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush questioned even characterisations of their association as a collaboration because it indicated that they were on equal footing. Despite these denials, Cheney considered the easygoing president pliable on a whole raft of administrative determinations.
The Period Following the Attacks
In charge of a faction of neo-conservatives that included Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been attending a session at a elementary school in Florida. As Bush traveled to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, ordering the shooting down of any unidentified planes heading toward the Capitol building.
Cheney said the assaults transformed him, making him become determined on retribution. Together with other neo-cons, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a invasion of Afghanistan in an endeavor to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, though there was little proof of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Controversial Decisions
He showed no remorse about the invasion, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, nor about the harsh treatment of suspects captured after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was based on inaccurate information circulated by Cheney, was the proper path to take. "It was the right thing to do at that time. I believed it then and I believe it today."
Yet during that period, there were opposing views at a senior level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the government's own representatives to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the post. "I witnessed, at a minimum," he subsequently stated "clear negligence, carelessness, and irresponsibility: in the worst case, falsehoods, ineptitude, and corruption."
Broader Context
Cheney was not completely to blame for the Iraq invasion. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for such action. He had drafted a memo setting out scenarios in which American interests might be threatened (encompassing "availability of crucial commodities, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "the United States should be positioned to take unilateral action when collective action prove impossible," particularly mentioning defense operations against Iraq.
Bush too had arrived in the White House generally inclined on executing what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. Following he had been dismissed by the president, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his objective of reducing America's engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and suggested military action against Iraq.
Bush bore a private grievance against Saddam, thinking he had been behind a plot to kill his father, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally objected to that one of the most prominent hotels in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his predecessor's countenance that all visitors had to tread upon.
Investigation Approaches
But it was Cheney who was part of the most vehement supporting striking Iraq, consistently quoting information documents that were both thin or entirely inaccurate. He supported what the Bush government politely called as "enhanced interrogation", the employment of waterboarding and harsh treatment.
Responding to a Senate report in 2014 that found that no useful information had been obtained through the harsh techniques, Cheney disregarded the findings as "full of crap". He informed Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to implement measures and create procedures to capture the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it never happened again. That was specifically what they did and they earn a lot of credit."
External Perception
Cheney took pleasure in monikers assigned to him by opponents such as the Star Wars villain and the dark figure, and by the idea that he was a dark force manipulating Bush. In the journalist's 2013 publication about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Do I represent the evil genius in the shadows that operates invisibly leave his lair? It's a effective way to operate, truthfully."
Corporate Connections
Dispute over his corporate affiliations followed him during his tenure as vice-president. While he had minimal expertise in corporate affairs but established relationships in security, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's biggest oil and gas corporations, in 1995 as chairman and CEO.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's VP candidate for the White House. Debatably, during the military campaign, Halliburton was given US deals totaling multiple billions.
It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly compensation during his period at the corporation grew from his previous salary when he was defence secretary to over four million. When he departed in 2000 he had a compensation package totaling in excess of $20m|twenty
