The late US VP Dick Cheney, who has died at the age of 84, was considered among the most significant incumbents of that office in the nation's history. Whereas countless second-in-commands had to settle for peripheral or figurehead roles, Cheney held enormous power during the administration of George W Bush, so much so that he was often referred to as the "actual president".
Bush resented such a characterisation and said the relationship was more complicated. He pointed out that Cheney was respectful, consistently referring to him in public as Mr President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush challenged even characterisations of their association as a team because it indicated that they were equals. Despite these denials, Cheney viewed the relaxed president accommodating on a wide array of policy decisions.
The Post-9/11 Era
In charge of a faction of neo-cons that encompassed Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been attending a gathering at a elementary school in Florida. Whereas Bush headed for a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, commanding the shooting down of any non-communicating planes approaching the Capitol building.
Cheney said the assaults changed him, making him become determined on retribution. In conjunction with other neo-cons, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a invasion of Afghanistan in an attempt to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, even though there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Debated Decisions
He expressed no regrets about the military campaign, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, nor about the harsh treatment of suspects captured 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 path to take. "It proved to be the right thing to do then. I had faith at the time and I hold that view today."
However even then, there were contrary opinions at a high level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the White House's own delegates to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the role. "I witnessed, at a minimum," he later wrote "obvious failure, carelessness, and irresponsibility: in the worst case, falsehoods, unfitness, and dishonesty."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not entirely responsible for the Iraq invasion. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had advocated for similar measures. He had written a memorandum setting out circumstances in which US concerns might be compromised (encompassing "obtaining essential resources, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "America should be prepared to operate alone when cooperative measures cannot be orchestrated," explicitly citing military moves against Iraq.
Bush additionally had assumed the Oval Office vaguely intent on executing what his predecessor had specifically avoided to do in 1991; topple Saddam. Subsequent to he had been fired by the administration, the finance chief Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his intention of lowering America's participation in the regional tensions and suggested defense operations against Iraq.
Bush bore a personal grudge against Saddam, thinking he had been responsible for a scheme to murder his parent, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally disliked that one of the most prominent accommodations in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his parent's visage that everyone had to walk over.
Questioning Techniques
But it was Cheney who was among the most outspoken advocating attacking Iraq, repeatedly quoting intelligence reports that were either thin or completely misleading. He supported what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "advanced techniques", the application of simulated drowning and harsh treatment.
Responding to a Senate document in 2014 that found that no useful information had come from the torture, Cheney dismissed the report as "full of crap". He told Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to implement measures and establish initiatives to apprehend the bastards who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it never happened again. That's exactly what they did and they earn a lot of praise."
Public Image
Cheney reveled in monikers assigned to him by opponents such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the concept that he was a sinister influence manipulating Bush. In the journalist's 2013 volume about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Am I the malevolent mastermind in the corner that operates invisibly leave his hole? This represents a advantageous way to operate, actually."
Commercial Ties
Dispute over his corporate affiliations pursued him through his period as VP. Although he had little experience in business but good contacts in military, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's largest energy companies, in 1995 as chairman and chief executive.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's VP candidate for the White House. Contentiously, during the military campaign, Halliburton was given US contracts worth billions.
It significantly boosted his finances. His annual income during his time at the company rose from his previous salary during his time as defence secretary to over four million. When he resigned in 2000 he had a severance arrangement valued at in excess of $20m|twenty
