The former US VP Dick Cheney, who died at age 84, was seen as among the most powerful holders of that office in US history. While numerous second-in-commands were confined to peripheral or ceremonial roles, Cheney held substantial power during the administration of George W Bush, so much so that he was commonly referred to as the "real president".
Bush resented such a characterisation and said the relationship was more complex. He noted that Cheney was courteous, always calling him in public settings as Mr President, while he called him as Dick. Bush questioned even characterisations of their association as a team because it suggested that they were peers. Despite these objections, Cheney considered the relaxed president pliable on a whole raft of administrative determinations.
A Post-9/11 Era
Leading of a contingent of neo-cons that featured military head Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the military intervention 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 taking part in a meeting at a school in Florida. Whereas Bush headed for a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, directing the shooting down of any unidentified planes approaching the US Capitol.
Cheney claimed the attacks changed him, leading him to become determined on retribution. Along with other neo-conservatives, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a invasion of Afghanistan in an effort to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the invasion of Iraq, though there was little proof of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Controversial Policies
He voiced no apologies about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis died, and not about the waterboarding of detainees captured after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was based on inaccurate reports echoed by Cheney, was the proper path to take. "It was the right thing to do back then. I believed it back then and I hold that view today."
Yet during that period, there were contrary opinions at a senior level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the administration's own special envoys to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the role. "I observed, as a baseline," he subsequently stated "clear negligence, negligence, and irresponsibility: in the worst case, deception, unfitness, and graft."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not completely to blame for the Iraq campaign. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had written a memo outlining circumstances in which national priorities might be endangered (encompassing "obtaining vital raw materials, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "America should be prepared to act independently when cooperative measures cannot be arranged," explicitly referencing defense operations against Iraq.
Bush too had arrived in the presidency vaguely intent on executing what his parent had specifically avoided to do in 1991; topple Saddam. After he had been dismissed by the administration, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his intention of reducing America's participation in the Middle East dispute and mooted military action against Iraq.
Bush carried a individual resentment against Saddam, thinking he had been responsible for a scheme to murder his father, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore objected to that one of the largest establishments in Baghdad had a floor mural with a likeness of his parent's face that each person had to step on.
Questioning Techniques
But it was Cheney who was one of the most vehement supporting attacking Iraq, consistently citing agency briefings that were both thin or completely deceptive. He backed what the Bush administration politely called as "intensive questioning", the use of simulated drowning and physical pressure.
Answering a Senate analysis in 2014 that found that no useful information had resulted from the harsh techniques, Cheney rejected the conclusions as "full of crap". He told Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to take steps and create programmes to capture the individuals who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it would not recur. That is precisely what they did and they merit a lot of credit."
Public Image
Cheney took pleasure in labels given to him by critics such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the notion that he was a shadow power manipulating Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 publication about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Do I represent the sinister strategist in the shadows that operates invisibly leave his lair? That is a nice way to work, actually."
Commercial Ties
Dispute over his corporate affiliations pursued him through his period as VP. Although he had little experience in commerce but strong connections in security, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's largest energy companies, in 1995 as chairman and CEO.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's VP candidate for the presidency. Debatably, during the military campaign, Halliburton was given US contracts totaling substantial sums.
It made him rich. His yearly compensation during his tenure at the firm rose from his quarter-million dollars during his time as defence secretary to $4.4m. When he resigned in 2000 he had a severance arrangement valued at over $20m|twenty
