The deceased US vice-president Dick Cheney, who has died at age 84, was considered among the most influential incumbents of the vice-presidency in US history. Although countless VPs were limited to minor or ceremonial positions, Cheney wielded huge power during the presidency of George W Bush, so much so that he was frequently called as the "actual president".
Bush resented such a characterisation and claimed the relationship was more complex. He observed that Cheney was deferential, invariably addressing him in public as President, while he called him as Dick. Bush disputed even characterisations of their association as a team because it implied that they were peers. Despite these objections, Cheney considered the relaxed president pliable on a wide array of administrative determinations.
A Period Following the Attacks
At the head of a faction of conservative hawks that included Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been participating in a session at a school in Florida. While Bush traveled to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, directing the destruction of any non-communicating airplanes nearing the government building.
Cheney said the strikes altered his perspective, leading him to become focused on retaliation. In conjunction with other neo-cons, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a occupation of Afghanistan in an effort to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then vigorously pushed for the invasion of Iraq, even though there was little proof of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Controversial Actions
He voiced no apologies about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, nor about the waterboarding of suspects captured after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was based on faulty intelligence repeated by Cheney, was the right decision. "It proved to be the proper decision to do at that time. I believed it at the time and I maintain that stance today."
But even at the time, there were dissenting voices at a high level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the government's own delegates to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the role. "I witnessed, as a baseline," he wrote later "true dereliction, carelessness, and recklessness: potentially, falsehoods, incompetence, and graft."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not entirely responsible for the Iraq invasion. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had advocated for similar measures. He had composed a memo detailing situations in which national priorities might be threatened (featuring "access to crucial commodities, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "the United States should be positioned to take unilateral action when collective action cannot be orchestrated," particularly referencing military moves against Iraq.
Bush additionally had arrived in the presidency generally inclined on implementing what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; remove Saddam. After he had been sacked by the White House, the finance chief Paul O'Neill disclosed 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 Israeli-Palestinian conflict and suggested armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush bore a private grievance against Saddam, believing he had been involved in a scheme to murder his father, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore disliked that one of the largest establishments in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a portrait of his parent's visage that all visitors had to tread upon.
Questioning Techniques
But it was Cheney who was among the most vociferous advocating invading Iraq, frequently quoting intelligence reports that were either insubstantial or completely inaccurate. He endorsed what the Bush administration indirectly described as "enhanced interrogation", the use of interrogation method and torture.
Answering a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no actionable intelligence had come from the interrogation methods, Cheney disregarded the report as "riddled with crap". He stated to Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to establish protocols and create initiatives to catch the individuals who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it was not repeated. That was specifically what they did and they merit a lot of credit."
Public Persona
Cheney enjoyed monikers assigned to him by opponents such as the Star Wars villain and the sinister presence, and by the notion that he was a dark force manipulating Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 book about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Am I the sinister strategist in the corner that remains unseen come out of his domain? It's a advantageous way to operate, truthfully."
Commercial Ties
Controversy over his corporate affiliations followed him through his period as vice-president. Even though he had minimal expertise in business but good contacts in security, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's largest petroleum conglomerates, in 1995 as chairman and CEO.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's VP candidate for the executive branch. Controversially, during the military campaign, Halliburton was awarded US deals totaling substantial sums.
It made him rich. His yearly compensation during his period at the company rose from his quarter-million dollars when he was defence secretary to $4.4m. When he left in 2000 he had a package totaling more than $20m|twenty
