The former US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who passed away at the age of 84, was regarded as among the most powerful occupants of the vice-presidency in American history. While many second-in-commands were limited to peripheral or symbolic functions, Cheney held enormous sway during the term of George W Bush, so much so that he was frequently referred to as the "actual president".
Bush objected to this portrayal and said the dynamic was more complicated. He noted that Cheney was respectful, consistently addressing him in public settings as the President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush questioned even descriptions of their association as a team because it implied that they were peers. Despite these objections, Cheney considered the laidback president pliable on a broad range of administrative determinations.
A Post-9/11 Era
At the head of a group of conservative hawks that included Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been participating in a gathering at a school in Florida. As Bush headed for a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney took command, commanding the downing of any unidentified airplanes heading toward the Capitol building.
Cheney said the strikes changed him, causing him to be 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 strongly advocated for the armed intervention of Iraq, though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Controversial Policies
He showed no remorse about the invasion, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, or about the enhanced interrogation of detainees apprehended after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was founded on faulty information repeated by Cheney, was the right decision. "It represented the correct action to do then. I was convinced then and I maintain that stance now."
However even then, there were dissenting voices at a high level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the White House's own representatives to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the position. "I saw, at a minimum," he later wrote "clear negligence, carelessness, and recklessness: potentially, falsehoods, ineptitude, and graft."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not entirely accountable for the Iraq military action. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had composed a memo detailing circumstances in which US concerns might be threatened (including "access to crucial commodities, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the United States should be postured to take unilateral action when cooperative measures cannot be orchestrated," particularly referencing military moves against Iraq.
Bush additionally had arrived in the White House vaguely intent on executing what his predecessor had specifically avoided to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. After he had been sacked by the administration, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his intention of diminishing America's involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and proposed defense operations against Iraq.
Bush held a personal grudge against Saddam, believing he had been behind a plot to kill his father, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore resented that one of the biggest accommodations in Baghdad had a ground design with a likeness of his father's visage that all visitors had to walk over.
Investigation Approaches
But it was Cheney who was one of the most outspoken behind striking Iraq, repeatedly citing agency briefings that were either thin or entirely inaccurate. He backed what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the use of interrogation method and physical pressure.
Answering a Senate document in 2014 that determined that no useful information had come from the harsh techniques, Cheney rejected the report as "riddled with crap". He stated to Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to take steps and put in place programmes to capture the bastards who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it was not repeated. That's exactly what they did and they deserve a lot of recognition."
Public Persona
Cheney reveled in nicknames imposed on him by detractors such as Darth Vader and the sinister presence, and by the notion that he was a shadow power manipulating Bush. In the journalist's 2013 volume about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Do I represent the malevolent mastermind in the background that nobody ever sees come out of his hole? This represents a nice way to work, actually."
Corporate Connections
Dispute over his commercial relationships accompanied him throughout his time as vice-president. While he had limited background in commerce but established relationships in security, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's largest oil and gas conglomerates, in 1995 as leader and chief executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's VP candidate for the White House. Debatably, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was granted US deals worth multiple billions.
It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly compensation during his time at the company grew from his quarter-million dollars while military head to $4.4m. When he resigned in 2000 he had a severance arrangement worth in excess of $20m|twenty
