The late US VP Dick Cheney, who died at age 84, was seen as among the most significant incumbents of that position in the nation's history. Although many vice-presidents were confined to peripheral or ceremonial roles, Cheney exercised enormous power during the administration of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was often described as the "true president".
Bush resented such a characterisation and said the dynamic was more complex. He noted that Cheney was deferential, consistently calling him in official appearances as President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush disputed even portrayals of their relationship as a collaboration because it indicated that they were peers. Despite these objections, Cheney considered the laidback president accommodating on a whole raft of administrative determinations.
The Post-9/11 Era
At the head of a faction of neo-cons that featured defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been participating in a meeting at a school in Florida. While Bush traveled to a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, commanding the shooting down of any unidentified aircraft nearing the US Capitol.
Cheney claimed the assaults transformed him, making him become determined on retaliation. Together with other neo-conservatives, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a invasion of Afghanistan in an attempt to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the armed intervention of Iraq, even though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Disputed Decisions
He showed no remorse about the armed intervention, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis perished, and not about the waterboarding of detainees apprehended after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was based on misleading information circulated by Cheney, was the right decision. "It proved to be the right thing to do at that time. I believed it at the time and I believe it presently."
But during that period, there were opposing views at a senior level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the administration's own special envoys to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the post. "I observed, at the very least," he later wrote "obvious failure, carelessness, and recklessness: potentially, falsehoods, incompetence, and graft."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not solely responsible for the Iraq campaign. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had drafted a document outlining situations in which national priorities might be endangered (encompassing "access to essential resources, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "America should be prepared to take unilateral action when collective action cannot be orchestrated," explicitly mentioning defense operations against Iraq.
Bush too had assumed the Oval Office generally inclined on carrying out what his parent had notably declined to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. After he had been dismissed by the president, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his plan of diminishing America's involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and proposed armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush bore a personal grudge against Saddam, convinced he had been responsible for a conspiracy to murder his parent, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He also disliked that one of the biggest hotels in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a portrait of his parent's face that everyone had to step on.
Questioning Techniques
Yet it was Cheney who was part of the most vociferous supporting attacking Iraq, repeatedly citing information documents that were either insubstantial or entirely deceptive. He endorsed what the Bush administration politely called as "intensive questioning", the use of simulated drowning and harsh treatment.
Addressing a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no actionable intelligence had come from the interrogation methods, Cheney dismissed the report as "full of crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to establish protocols and create programmes to apprehend the individuals who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it would not recur. That's exactly what they did and they earn a lot of credit."
External Perception
Cheney took pleasure in monikers assigned to him by opponents such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the notion that he was a dark force manipulating Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 volume about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Am I the sinister strategist in the shadows that nobody ever sees leave his domain? It's a advantageous way to function, in fact."
Business Interests
Debate over his business interests pursued him throughout his time as second-in-command. Even though he had limited background in business but established relationships in security, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest petroleum conglomerates, in 1995 as leader and top executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's election partner for the executive branch. Debatably, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was granted US deals worth multiple billions.
It significantly boosted his finances. His annual income during his time at the firm grew from his previous salary during his time as Pentagon chief to $4.4m. When he departed in 2000 he had a compensation package worth more than $20m|twenty
