The late US vice-president Dick Cheney, who has died at the age of 84, was considered among the most significant occupants of the vice-presidency in the nation's history. Although countless second-in-commands were confined to marginal or ceremonial functions, Cheney exercised substantial sway during the term of George W Bush, so much so that he was often described as the "true president".
Bush objected to this portrayal and said the dynamic was more complicated. He observed that Cheney was courteous, always addressing him in public settings as Mr President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush questioned even portrayals of their association as a collaboration because it indicated that they were equals. Regardless of such protestations, Cheney considered the easygoing president malleable on a wide array of administrative determinations.
A Post-9/11 Era
Leading of a contingent of neo-conservatives that featured military head Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been taking part in a meeting at a school in Florida. While Bush made his way to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took command, commanding the shooting down of any unresponsive airplanes heading toward the US Capitol.
Cheney stated the attacks changed him, causing him to be determined on revenge. Together with other neo-cons, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a takeover of Afghanistan in an effort to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the military action of Iraq, though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Debated Policies
He voiced no apologies about the military campaign, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis perished, nor about the enhanced interrogation of detainees apprehended after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was founded on inaccurate information echoed by Cheney, was the proper course of action. "It represented the correct action to do back then. I believed it back then and I hold that view today."
However even at the time, there were opposing views at a top tier about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the White House's own representatives to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the position. "I witnessed, as a baseline," he later wrote "true dereliction, carelessness, and recklessness: at worst, deception, incompetence, and graft."
Broader Context
Cheney was not solely accountable for the Iraq military action. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had drafted a memo setting out circumstances in which American interests might be threatened (encompassing "obtaining vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the US should be positioned to operate alone when joint efforts prove impossible," particularly citing armed actions against Iraq.
Bush too had arrived in the presidency vaguely intent on carrying out what his father had specifically avoided to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Following 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 involvement in the Middle East dispute and suggested defense operations against Iraq.
Bush held a individual resentment against Saddam, thinking he had been responsible for a plot to kill his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally resented that one of the biggest accommodations in Baghdad had a ground design with a likeness of his father's visage that everyone had to walk over.
Investigation Approaches
However it was Cheney who was among the most outspoken advocating attacking Iraq, consistently citing agency briefings that were whether thin or completely deceptive. He endorsed what the Bush government euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation", the application of waterboarding and harsh treatment.
Addressing a Senate analysis in 2014 that determined that no valuable data had been obtained through the torture, Cheney dismissed the conclusions as "full of crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to establish protocols and put in place initiatives to apprehend the perpetrators who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and ensure it was not repeated. That is precisely what they did and they earn a lot of credit."
External Perception
Cheney reveled in labels assigned to him by critics such as the Star Wars villain and The Prince of Darkness, 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 evil genius in the background that nobody ever sees come out of his domain? That is a advantageous way to work, actually."
Business Interests
Debate over his corporate affiliations followed him during his tenure as vice-president. While he had minimal expertise in corporate affairs but established relationships in security, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest oil and gas companies, in 1995 as leader and CEO.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's running mate for the executive branch. Debatably, during the military campaign, Halliburton was granted US contracts worth substantial sums.
It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly earnings during his time at the corporation rose from his quarter-million dollars when he was military head to $4.4m. When he departed in 2000 he had a severance arrangement valued at more than $20m|twenty
