The deceased US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was seen as one of the most influential holders of the vice-presidency in the nation's history. Although numerous VPs were limited to marginal or ceremonial functions, Cheney held huge influence during the term of George W Bush, so much so that he was commonly called as the "actual president".
Bush disliked that description and said the dynamic was more nuanced. He observed that Cheney was courteous, invariably referring to him in public settings as President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush disputed even portrayals of their relationship as a partnership because it indicated that they were equals. Regardless of these objections, Cheney viewed the easygoing president malleable on a whole raft of governmental choices.
A Post-9/11 Era
At the head of a faction of conservative hawks that included defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in response to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been taking part in a gathering at a educational institution in Florida. Whereas Bush traveled to a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney took command, ordering the shooting down of any unidentified aircraft nearing the Capitol building.
Cheney claimed the assaults transformed him, leading him to become focused on revenge. Together with other neo-cons, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a invasion of Afghanistan in an effort to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the invasion of Iraq, although there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Debated Policies
He expressed no regrets about the invasion, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis died, and not about the waterboarding of suspects captured after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was based on inaccurate reports repeated by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It represented the proper decision to do then. I believed it back then and I hold that view now."
But even then, there were dissenting voices at a high level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the administration's own representatives to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the post. "I witnessed, as a baseline," he later wrote "clear negligence, negligence, and recklessness: potentially, falsehoods, incompetence, and graft."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not solely accountable for the Iraq military action. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had drafted a memorandum setting out scenarios in which American interests might be threatened (featuring "availability of vital raw materials, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "America should be postured to take unilateral action when cooperative measures cannot be arranged," explicitly citing military moves against Iraq.
Bush too had entered the Oval Office vaguely intent on executing what his father had notably declined to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Subsequent to he had been fired by the president, the finance chief Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his intention of reducing America's engagement in the regional tensions and proposed armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush held a personal grudge against Saddam, convinced he had been responsible for a plot to assassinate his father, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore resented that one of the most prominent accommodations in Baghdad had a floor mural with a portrait of his predecessor's countenance that everyone had to step on.
Investigation Approaches
Yet it was Cheney who was part of the most vehement supporting attacking Iraq, repeatedly referencing information documents that were both weak or entirely deceptive. He backed what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "advanced techniques", the application of waterboarding and physical pressure.
Answering a Senate report in 2014 that concluded that no useful information had been obtained through the torture, Cheney dismissed the findings as "loaded with crap". He stated to Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to implement measures and establish initiatives to capture the bastards who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and ensure it would not recur. That is precisely what they did and they earn a lot of credit."
Public Image
Cheney reveled in labels assigned to him by opponents such as Darth Vader and The Prince of Darkness, and by the idea that he was a shadow power controlling Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 book about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Is it me who is the evil genius in the background that nobody ever sees leave his lair? It's a advantageous way to work, in fact."
Business Interests
Dispute over his business interests pursued him throughout his time as second-in-command. While he had minimal expertise in business but strong connections in security, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest petroleum conglomerates, in 1995 as chairman and top executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's election partner for the executive branch. Contentiously, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was awarded US deals worth billions.
It significantly boosted his finances. His yearly compensation during his period at the company grew from his quarter-million dollars during his time as defence secretary to millions. When he resigned in 2000 he had a severance arrangement valued at over $20m|twenty
