The late US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at the age of 84, was considered one of the most influential holders of that office in US history. While countless VPs were limited to minor or figurehead functions, Cheney exercised enormous influence during the presidency of George W Bush, to the point that he was commonly referred to as the "true president".
Bush disliked that description and stated the relationship was more complex. He pointed out that Cheney was courteous, consistently calling him in official appearances as Mr President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush disputed even characterisations of their partnership as a collaboration because it suggested that they were peers. Despite these objections, Cheney viewed the laidback president accommodating on a broad range of governmental choices.
The Post-9/11 Era
At the head of a group of neo-cons that featured Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been attending a meeting at a school in Florida. As Bush traveled to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took command, directing the shooting down of any unidentified planes heading toward the government building.
Cheney said the assaults changed him, causing him to be determined on revenge. Together with other neo-cons, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a takeover of Afghanistan in an endeavor to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, although there was little proof of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Disputed Policies
He showed no remorse about the invasion, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, 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 inaccurate reports echoed by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It represented the right thing to do then. I was convinced then and I hold that view presently."
But even then, there were opposing views at a top tier about the poor management of Iraq. One of the White House's own delegates to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the position. "I witnessed, at a minimum," he wrote later "obvious failure, inaction, and recklessness: potentially, falsehoods, unfitness, and corruption."
Broader Context
Cheney was not completely responsible for the Iraq invasion. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had composed a memo setting out situations in which US concerns might be endangered (encompassing "availability of essential resources, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "America should be prepared to take unilateral action when cooperative measures cannot be orchestrated," explicitly referencing military moves against Iraq.
Bush also had entered the Oval Office somewhat determined on implementing what his parent had famously refused to do in 1991; remove Saddam. After he had been sacked by the administration, the finance chief Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his objective of diminishing America's involvement in the regional tensions and proposed defense operations against Iraq.
Bush bore a private grievance against Saddam, believing he had been behind a plot to assassinate his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally resented that one of the biggest establishments in Baghdad had a floor mural with a image of his father's visage that each person had to walk over.
Questioning Techniques
Yet it was Cheney who was part of the most vehement behind striking Iraq, frequently citing information documents that were either weak or entirely misleading. He endorsed what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "advanced techniques", the application of interrogation method and torture.
Addressing a Senate analysis in 2014 that found that no useful information had come from the interrogation methods, Cheney dismissed the conclusions as "riddled with crap". He told Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to establish protocols and create initiatives to apprehend the bastards who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it was not repeated. That's exactly what they did and they merit a lot of credit."
External Perception
Cheney reveled in monikers imposed on him by opponents such as Darth Vader and the sinister presence, and by the notion that he was a shadow power manipulating Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 publication about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Is it me who is the sinister strategist in the corner that remains unseen leave his hole? It's a effective way to function, in fact."
Commercial Ties
Controversy over his commercial relationships accompanied him through his period as vice-president. Even though he had limited background in commerce but good contacts in defence, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial energy corporations, in 1995 as chairman and chief executive.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's running mate for the White House. Contentiously, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was granted US deals valued at multiple billions.
It significantly boosted his finances. His yearly earnings during his tenure at the company rose from his $258,394 when he was military head to $4.4m. When he resigned in 2000 he had a package worth more than $20m|twenty
