The former US VP Dick Cheney, who has died at the age of 84, was seen as arguably the most powerful occupants of that office in the nation's history. While many vice-presidents had to settle for peripheral or figurehead positions, Cheney exercised enormous sway during the administration of George W Bush, to the point that he was frequently described as the "actual president".
Bush objected to that description and said the relationship was more complex. He observed that Cheney was courteous, consistently calling him in public as the President, while he called him as Dick. Bush disputed even portrayals of their partnership as a partnership because it implied that they were on equal footing. Regardless of these denials, Cheney viewed the easygoing president pliable on a broad range of policy decisions.
A Post-9/11 Era
In charge of a faction of neo-cons that included Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in response to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been taking part in a session at a educational institution in Florida. While Bush traveled to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, ordering the destruction of any unresponsive aircraft heading toward the Capitol building.
Cheney stated the strikes changed him, causing him to be focused on retaliation. Along with other conservative figures, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a invasion of Afghanistan in an endeavor to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then vigorously pushed for the military action of Iraq, although there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Disputed Actions
He showed no remorse about the armed intervention, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, nor about the harsh treatment of detainees captured after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was founded on faulty information repeated by Cheney, was the proper course of action. "It represented the right thing to do at that time. I had faith at the time and I believe it presently."
Yet even then, there were dissenting voices at a high level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the government's own representatives to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the role. "I observed, at a minimum," he subsequently stated "true dereliction, inaction, and recklessness: at worst, falsehoods, unfitness, and dishonesty."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not completely responsible for the Iraq campaign. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for such action. He had written a memo setting out situations in which American interests might be endangered (encompassing "availability of crucial commodities, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "the US should be prepared to take unilateral action when cooperative measures cannot be arranged," particularly mentioning military moves against Iraq.
Bush also had arrived in the presidency vaguely intent on executing what his predecessor had specifically avoided to do in 1991; topple Saddam. Subsequent to he had been sacked by the president, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his plan of lowering America's engagement in the Middle East dispute and mooted armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush bore a individual resentment 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 largest hotels in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his father's face that each person had to walk over.
Questioning Techniques
However it was Cheney who was one of the most vociferous advocating invading Iraq, repeatedly quoting intelligence reports that were either thin or entirely deceptive. He endorsed what the Bush administration euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the employment of interrogation method and torture.
Answering a Senate report in 2014 that concluded that no actionable intelligence had come from the interrogation methods, Cheney rejected the findings as "full of crap". He stated to Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to establish protocols and establish programmes to capture the bastards who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it would not recur. That's exactly what they did and they deserve a lot of credit."
External Perception
Cheney enjoyed labels assigned to him by detractors such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the concept that he was a sinister influence directing Bush. In the author's 2013 volume about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Is it me who is the malevolent mastermind in the shadows that nobody ever sees come out of his hole? It's a nice way to operate, truthfully."
Business Interests
Controversy over his commercial relationships accompanied him during his tenure as vice-president. While he had minimal expertise in corporate affairs but strong connections in security, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's largest petroleum companies, in 1995 as leader and chief executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's VP candidate for the presidency. Controversially, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was granted US deals worth substantial sums.
It made him rich. His yearly compensation during his time at the corporation increased from his previous salary during his time as defence secretary to over four million. When he left in 2000 he had a severance arrangement worth over $20m|twenty
