The late US VP Dick Cheney, who has died at the age of 84, was seen as one of the most significant holders of that position in the nation's history. Although numerous VPs had to settle for marginal or symbolic functions, Cheney wielded huge power during the administration of George W Bush, to the point that he was often called as the "true president".
Bush resented that description and stated the relationship was more complicated. He noted that Cheney was respectful, invariably addressing him in public settings as the President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush challenged even characterisations of their relationship as a collaboration because it implied that they were peers. In spite of such protestations, Cheney found the easygoing president accommodating on a wide array of policy decisions.
The Post-9/11 Era
Leading of a contingent of neo-conservatives that featured Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been taking part in a meeting at a school in Florida. As Bush traveled to a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, ordering the shooting down of any unidentified airplanes heading toward the government building.
Cheney said the attacks transformed him, making him become focused on retribution. Together with other neo-conservatives, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a takeover of Afghanistan in an effort to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, even though there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Debated Policies
He expressed no regrets about the armed intervention, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis perished, and not about the enhanced interrogation of suspects apprehended after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was founded on faulty intelligence echoed by Cheney, was the proper path to take. "It represented the correct action to do at that time. I was convinced back then and I hold that view today."
However during that period, there were dissenting voices at a top tier about the poor management of Iraq. One of the White House's own representatives to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the position. "I witnessed, at the very least," he later wrote "true dereliction, inaction, and recklessness: in the worst case, deception, ineptitude, and dishonesty."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not solely responsible for the Iraq military action. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had drafted a memorandum detailing scenarios in which national priorities might be endangered (featuring "obtaining vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "the United States should be positioned to act independently when cooperative measures cannot be orchestrated," specifically citing defense operations against Iraq.
Bush additionally had entered the Oval Office somewhat determined on executing what his parent had famously refused to do in 1991; topple Saddam. Subsequent to he had been fired by the administration, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his plan of lowering America's participation in the Middle East dispute and suggested defense operations against Iraq.
Bush carried a individual resentment against Saddam, thinking he had been responsible for a conspiracy to murder his father, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He also objected to that one of the largest establishments in Baghdad had a ground design with a likeness of his father's countenance that everyone had to walk over.
Investigation Approaches
However it was Cheney who was one of the most vociferous advocating striking Iraq, frequently referencing agency briefings that were both weak or completely deceptive. He endorsed what the Bush government politely called as "intensive questioning", the application of interrogation method and torture.
Addressing a Senate document in 2014 that concluded that no actionable intelligence had come from the torture, Cheney dismissed the report as "riddled with crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to take steps and create procedures to apprehend the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it was not repeated. That is precisely what they did and they merit a lot of praise."
External Perception
Cheney enjoyed monikers assigned to him by detractors such as Darth Vader and The Prince of Darkness, and by the idea that he was a shadow power manipulating Bush. In the journalist's 2013 volume about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Am I the sinister strategist in the background that remains unseen come out of his lair? It's a advantageous way to operate, truthfully."
Business Interests
Debate over his corporate affiliations pursued him throughout his time as vice-president. Although he had little experience in business but good contacts in defence, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's largest energy conglomerates, in 1995 as leader and CEO.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's VP candidate for the White House. Debatably, during the military campaign, Halliburton was awarded US agreements worth substantial sums.
It significantly boosted his finances. His yearly compensation during his period at the corporation grew from his $258,394 when he was military head to over four million. When he resigned in 2000 he had a severance arrangement valued at in excess of $20m|twenty
