The deceased US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at the age of 84, was regarded as arguably the most significant incumbents of that office in American history. Whereas numerous vice-presidents were limited to minor or figurehead positions, Cheney exercised substantial influence during the administration of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was often called as the "actual president".
Bush resented this portrayal and said the dynamic was more complex. He noted that Cheney was respectful, invariably addressing him in official appearances as Mr President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush disputed even descriptions of their relationship as a team because it suggested that they were peers. In spite of such protestations, Cheney viewed the easygoing president malleable on a broad range of policy decisions.
A Aftermath of 9/11
Leading of a contingent of neo-conservatives that encompassed Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in response to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been participating in a gathering at a school in Florida. As Bush headed for a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, ordering the shooting down of any non-communicating planes approaching the government building.
Cheney stated the strikes altered his perspective, leading him to become intent on retaliation. Together with other neo-conservatives, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a invasion of Afghanistan in an effort to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the military action of Iraq, though there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Disputed Decisions
He expressed no regrets about the invasion, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, or about the waterboarding of individuals apprehended after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was predicated on faulty intelligence repeated by Cheney, was the right course of action. "It was the correct action to do then. I was convinced back then and I believe it now."
However even then, there were dissenting voices at a senior level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the administration's own delegates to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the position. "I witnessed, at a minimum," he wrote later "true dereliction, carelessness, and irresponsibility: at worst, falsehoods, unfitness, and dishonesty."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not solely responsible for the Iraq invasion. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for similar measures. He had composed a memo setting out situations in which national priorities might be threatened (featuring "availability of essential resources, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the United States should be prepared to take unilateral action when cooperative measures prove impossible," explicitly referencing military moves against Iraq.
Bush also had assumed the presidency vaguely intent on implementing what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. After he had been sacked by the president, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his plan of diminishing America's engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and proposed armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush held a personal grudge against Saddam, thinking he had been behind a plot to kill his parent, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally objected to that one of the biggest establishments in Baghdad had a ground design with a portrait of his parent's countenance that each person had to walk over.
Questioning Techniques
However it was Cheney who was part of the most outspoken advocating striking Iraq, consistently citing intelligence reports that were whether thin or entirely inaccurate. He supported what the Bush White House indirectly described as "enhanced interrogation", the employment of interrogation method and torture.
Addressing a Senate report in 2014 that concluded that no actionable intelligence had come from the torture, Cheney disregarded the conclusions as "riddled with crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to take steps and put in place procedures to apprehend the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it never happened again. That is precisely what they did and they earn a lot of recognition."
Public Persona
Cheney took pleasure in labels assigned to him by critics such as Darth Vader and The Prince of Darkness, and by the idea that he was a dark force manipulating Bush. In the journalist's 2013 volume about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Do I represent the malevolent mastermind in the corner that remains unseen leave his hole? That is a effective way to function, in fact."
Commercial Ties
Controversy over his business interests accompanied him during his tenure as VP. Although he had limited background in corporate affairs but established relationships in defence, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's biggest petroleum companies, in 1995 as chair and CEO.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's VP candidate for the executive branch. Debatably, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was given US deals worth multiple billions.
It significantly boosted his finances. His yearly compensation during his tenure at the firm grew from his quarter-million dollars while defence secretary to over four million. When he left in 2000 he had a severance arrangement worth in excess of $20m|twenty
