The late US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at the age of 84, was considered arguably the most significant occupants of that position in the nation's history. While many VPs had to settle for peripheral or symbolic functions, Cheney held huge influence during the term of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was often referred to as the "actual president".
Bush disliked such a characterisation and claimed the dynamic was more complicated. He pointed out that Cheney was courteous, invariably addressing him in public as the President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush questioned even characterisations of their partnership as a team because it indicated that they were peers. In spite of these denials, Cheney viewed the relaxed president accommodating on a wide array of administrative determinations.
A Post-9/11 Era
In charge of a group of conservative hawks that encompassed defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in response to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been participating in a session at a school in Florida. Whereas Bush traveled to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took command, ordering the destruction of any non-communicating airplanes heading toward the Capitol building.
Cheney claimed the strikes altered his perspective, causing him to be focused on retaliation. In conjunction with other neo-cons, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a occupation of Afghanistan in an endeavor to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the invasion of Iraq, although there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Disputed Decisions
He voiced no apologies about the invasion, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis died, nor about the waterboarding of suspects apprehended after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was based on misleading information repeated by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It represented the right thing to do back then. I had faith then and I believe it presently."
But even then, there were dissenting voices at a top tier about the poor management of Iraq. One of the government's own delegates to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the position. "I witnessed, at the very least," he subsequently stated "clear negligence, negligence, and recklessness: potentially, falsehoods, incompetence, and graft."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not solely accountable for the Iraq invasion. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had drafted a document detailing situations in which national priorities might be endangered (featuring "availability of essential resources, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "America should be positioned to operate alone when collective action prove impossible," explicitly citing defense operations against Iraq.
Bush too had assumed the Oval Office somewhat determined on carrying out what his parent had famously refused to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Following he had been dismissed by the White House, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his plan of reducing America's involvement in the regional tensions and mooted military action against Iraq.
Bush carried a personal grudge against Saddam, believing he had been responsible for a conspiracy to murder his father, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He also objected to that one of the largest establishments in Baghdad had a ground design with a image of his father's visage that each person had to tread upon.
Questioning Techniques
However it was Cheney who was part of the most vociferous behind invading Iraq, frequently quoting intelligence reports that were both weak or totally misleading. He backed what the Bush administration politely called as "enhanced interrogation", the use of simulated drowning and torture.
Answering a Senate report in 2014 that determined that no valuable data had been obtained through the harsh techniques, Cheney dismissed the findings as "full of crap". He told Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to implement measures and establish procedures to catch the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it never happened again. That was specifically what they did and they merit a lot of praise."
External Perception
Cheney enjoyed monikers assigned to him by detractors such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the idea that he was a dark force directing Bush. In the author's 2013 volume about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Is it me who is the evil genius in the corner that operates invisibly emerge from his lair? That is a advantageous way to work, actually."
Commercial Ties
Dispute over his commercial relationships pursued him through his period as vice-president. While he had minimal expertise in corporate affairs but established relationships in security, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's largest energy companies, in 1995 as leader and chief executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's running mate for the executive branch. Debatably, during the military campaign, Halliburton was granted US contracts valued at multiple billions.
It significantly boosted his finances. His annual income during his tenure at the corporation rose from his $258,394 during his time as military head to millions. When he resigned in 2000 he had a severance arrangement worth in excess of $20m|twenty
