The former US VP Dick Cheney, who has died at age 84, was seen as one of the most significant holders of the vice-presidency in US history. While many vice-presidents were confined to marginal or ceremonial functions, Cheney wielded huge sway during the presidency of George W Bush, to the point that he was often described as the "actual president".
Bush resented such a characterisation and said the relationship was more complex. He observed that Cheney was respectful, invariably calling him in public as the President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush challenged even descriptions of their partnership as a partnership because it indicated that they were equals. Regardless of these denials, Cheney considered the easygoing president accommodating on a wide array of policy decisions.
The Period Following the Attacks
In charge of a contingent of neo-conservatives that included military head Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been attending a session at a school in Florida. While Bush traveled to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, ordering the destruction of any unresponsive planes approaching the US Capitol.
Cheney claimed the assaults transformed him, causing him to be intent on retribution. Along with other neo-conservatives, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a takeover of Afghanistan in an endeavor to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the armed intervention of Iraq, though there was little proof of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Controversial Policies
He voiced no apologies about the invasion, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, and not about the waterboarding of suspects rounded up after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was based on faulty intelligence repeated by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It proved to be the right thing to do at that time. I was convinced then and I hold that view presently."
But even then, there were opposing views at a senior level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the White House's own special envoys to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the position. "I witnessed, at a minimum," he wrote later "obvious failure, carelessness, and unaccountability: at worst, deception, unfitness, and graft."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not solely responsible for the Iraq campaign. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had advocated for comparable steps. He had written a memorandum outlining circumstances in which American interests might be endangered (including "access to crucial commodities, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "the US should be postured to take unilateral action when collective action cannot be arranged," explicitly citing military moves against Iraq.
Bush too had arrived in the presidency vaguely intent on executing what his father had specifically avoided to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. After he had been dismissed by the administration, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his plan of lowering America's involvement in the regional tensions and suggested military action against Iraq.
Bush bore a individual resentment against Saddam, believing he had been responsible for a plot to murder his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally resented that one of the most prominent establishments in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a portrait of his parent's countenance that everyone had to tread upon.
Questioning Techniques
But it was Cheney who was among the most vehement advocating striking Iraq, consistently referencing information documents that were both weak or completely inaccurate. He supported what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "advanced techniques", the employment of waterboarding and harsh treatment.
Addressing a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no valuable data had been obtained through the torture, Cheney dismissed the report as "riddled with crap". He stated to Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to implement measures and establish programmes to catch the bastards who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and ensure it never happened again. That is precisely what they did and they earn a lot of credit."
Public Persona
Cheney reveled in monikers assigned to him by critics such as the dark character and the sinister presence, and by the idea that he was a shadow power manipulating Bush. In the author's 2013 publication about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Am I the malevolent mastermind in the shadows that operates invisibly leave his domain? This represents a effective way to work, truthfully."
Business Interests
Dispute over his commercial relationships accompanied him during his tenure as VP. Although he had little experience in corporate affairs but good contacts in military, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest energy companies, in 1995 as chair and top executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's VP candidate for the executive branch. Debatably, during the military campaign, Halliburton was given US deals valued at billions.
It made him rich. His yearly earnings during his period at the company rose from his quarter-million dollars during his time as defence secretary to over four million. When he resigned in 2000 he had a compensation package worth more than $20m|twenty
