The late US vice-president Dick Cheney, who has died at the age of 84, was considered among the most influential holders of that office in the nation's history. Although countless VPs had to settle for peripheral or figurehead positions, Cheney wielded substantial influence during the administration of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was frequently called as the "true president".
Bush resented such a characterisation and stated the dynamic was more complex. He noted that Cheney was deferential, always referring to him in public as President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush challenged even descriptions of their relationship as a collaboration because it implied that they were equals. Regardless of these denials, Cheney viewed the laidback president malleable on a whole raft of policy decisions.
The Post-9/11 Era
In charge of a contingent of neo-conservatives that included Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for 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 elementary school in Florida. While Bush headed for a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took command, commanding the shooting down of any unidentified airplanes approaching the government building.
Cheney said the attacks transformed him, leading him to become focused on retaliation. In conjunction with other neo-conservatives, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a invasion of Afghanistan in an effort to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the military action of Iraq, though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Controversial Actions
He voiced no apologies about the military campaign, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis perished, or about the waterboarding of individuals rounded up after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was founded on misleading information echoed by Cheney, was the proper decision. "It was the proper decision to do then. I believed it then and I believe it today."
Yet even at the time, there were opposing views at a top tier about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the administration's own special envoys to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the role. "I witnessed, at a minimum," he wrote later "clear negligence, inaction, and recklessness: in the worst case, lying, incompetence, and graft."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not completely accountable for the Iraq invasion. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had composed a memorandum outlining circumstances in which US concerns might be compromised (including "obtaining vital raw materials, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the United States should be postured to take unilateral action when cooperative measures cannot be arranged," explicitly mentioning military moves against Iraq.
Bush additionally had arrived in the Oval Office generally inclined on carrying out what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; topple Saddam. After he had been sacked by the White House, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his plan of reducing America's participation in the Middle East dispute and mooted military action against Iraq.
Bush held a private grievance against Saddam, believing he had been behind a conspiracy to assassinate his parent, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally disliked that one of the biggest accommodations in Baghdad had a ground design with a image of his father's visage that all visitors had to step on.
Interrogation Methods
But it was Cheney who was one of the most vehement supporting attacking Iraq, consistently citing information documents that were both weak or completely inaccurate. He supported what the Bush government euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation", the use of simulated drowning and harsh treatment.
Responding to a Senate document in 2014 that determined that no useful information had been obtained through the harsh techniques, Cheney rejected the findings as "full of crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to take steps and create initiatives to catch the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it was not repeated. That was specifically what they did and they deserve a lot of credit."
Public Image
Cheney took pleasure in labels given to him by detractors such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the notion that he was a shadow power controlling 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: "Is it me who is the sinister strategist in the corner that operates invisibly leave his domain? It's a advantageous way to function, in fact."
Commercial Ties
Dispute over his commercial relationships accompanied him during his tenure as second-in-command. Even though he had little experience in business but good contacts in military, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial petroleum companies, in 1995 as chairman and CEO.
In 2000 he became Bush's running mate for the executive branch. Contentiously, during the military campaign, Halliburton was awarded US deals totaling billions.
It made him rich. His yearly compensation during his period at the company increased from his $258,394 during his time as Pentagon chief to millions. When he resigned in 2000 he had a compensation package worth more than $20m|twenty
