The former US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was seen as among the most influential holders of that office in US history. Whereas many VPs were limited to marginal or figurehead roles, Cheney exercised substantial power during the term of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was often described as the "actual president".
Bush disliked such a characterisation and claimed the relationship was more complicated. He noted that Cheney was deferential, always calling him in public settings as President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush challenged even portrayals of their relationship as a collaboration because it indicated that they were peers. In spite of these denials, Cheney found the laidback president malleable on a broad range of administrative determinations.
The Aftermath of 9/11
In charge of a faction of neo-conservatives that encompassed Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been attending a meeting at a elementary school in Florida. While Bush traveled to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took command, ordering the downing of any unresponsive planes nearing the Capitol building.
Cheney stated the attacks altered his perspective, causing him to be intent on retribution. Along with other neo-conservatives, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a invasion of Afghanistan in an effort to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the invasion of Iraq, even though there was little proof of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Controversial Decisions
He showed no remorse about the military campaign, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis perished, nor about the enhanced interrogation of detainees apprehended after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was founded on faulty reports circulated by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It represented the proper decision to do then. I had faith at the time and I believe it today."
But even at the time, there were contrary opinions at a high level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the White House's own representatives to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the role. "I saw, as a baseline," he later wrote "clear negligence, carelessness, and irresponsibility: potentially, falsehoods, unfitness, and graft."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not completely to blame for the Iraq military action. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for such action. He had drafted a document outlining circumstances in which American interests might be endangered (including "availability of essential resources, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the United States should be positioned to take unilateral action when joint efforts cannot be arranged," explicitly citing military moves against Iraq.
Bush also had entered the Oval Office vaguely intent on executing what his parent had notably declined to do in 1991; topple Saddam. After he had been fired by the White House, the finance chief Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his plan of diminishing America's participation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and proposed armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush carried a individual resentment against Saddam, convinced he had been behind a scheme to assassinate his father, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore objected to that one of the most prominent establishments in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his parent's face that each person had to walk over.
Interrogation Methods
Yet it was Cheney who was among the most outspoken advocating invading Iraq, repeatedly referencing agency briefings that were either thin or entirely deceptive. He supported what the Bush government indirectly described as "intensive questioning", the application of simulated drowning and harsh treatment.
Addressing a Senate document in 2014 that found that no valuable data had come from the torture, Cheney dismissed the findings as "loaded with crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to establish protocols and establish initiatives to apprehend the individuals who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it never happened again. That was specifically what they did and they earn a lot of credit."
Public Image
Cheney reveled in labels assigned to him by detractors such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the idea that he was a dark force manipulating Bush. In the journalist's 2013 volume about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Do I represent the malevolent mastermind in the background that remains unseen leave his hole? That is a effective way to function, in fact."
Business Interests
Debate over his corporate affiliations accompanied him through his period as VP. Although he had little experience in corporate affairs but strong connections in security, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest petroleum companies, in 1995 as chairman and chief executive.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's election partner for the presidency. Debatably, during the military campaign, Halliburton was awarded US agreements totaling billions.
It made him rich. His annual income during his period at the firm rose from his quarter-million dollars while military head to over four million. When he left in 2000 he had a severance arrangement worth in excess of $20m|twenty
