The former US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was regarded as among the most powerful occupants of the vice-presidency in American history. Although countless VPs were limited to marginal or figurehead functions, Cheney exercised huge influence during the administration of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was commonly described as the "real president".
Bush disliked this portrayal and said the relationship was more complicated. He noted that Cheney was deferential, always calling him in public settings as the President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush questioned even descriptions of their association as a collaboration because it suggested that they were equals. Regardless of these objections, Cheney considered the easygoing president accommodating on a wide array of policy decisions.
The Aftermath of 9/11
In charge of a faction of conservative hawks that included defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been attending a meeting at a educational institution in Florida. Whereas Bush headed for a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, commanding the shooting down of any unidentified aircraft heading toward the government building.
Cheney stated the strikes changed him, causing him to be focused on retribution. In conjunction with other conservative figures, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a takeover of Afghanistan in an endeavor to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, though there was little proof of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Disputed Actions
He showed no remorse about the invasion, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, nor about the enhanced interrogation of suspects rounded up after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was based on misleading intelligence repeated by Cheney, was the proper course of action. "It represented the correct action to do then. I was convinced at the time and I believe it today."
However even at the time, there were contrary opinions at a high level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the government's own special envoys to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the position. "I saw, at a minimum," he wrote later "obvious failure, carelessness, and unaccountability: in the worst case, deception, unfitness, and graft."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not completely accountable for the Iraq campaign. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had composed a document setting out situations in which national priorities might be endangered (encompassing "availability of vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "America should be prepared to act independently when cooperative measures prove impossible," explicitly referencing armed actions against Iraq.
Bush additionally had assumed the presidency vaguely intent on executing what his parent had specifically avoided to do in 1991; topple Saddam. After he had been fired by the administration, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his intention of reducing America's participation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and suggested armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush held a private grievance against Saddam, thinking he had been involved in a scheme to kill his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He also objected to that one of the largest hotels in Baghdad had a ground design with a portrait of his father's face that all visitors had to tread upon.
Investigation Approaches
Yet it was Cheney who was part of the most vehement supporting attacking Iraq, consistently quoting agency briefings that were either thin or totally misleading. He supported what the Bush White House indirectly described as "advanced techniques", the employment of waterboarding and physical pressure.
Answering a Senate report in 2014 that found that no actionable intelligence had resulted from the torture, Cheney rejected the findings as "riddled with crap". He informed Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to implement measures and put in place procedures to capture the bastards who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it never happened again. That was specifically what they did and they deserve a lot of credit."
Public Image
Cheney reveled in labels assigned to him by detractors such as Darth Vader and the sinister presence, and by the concept that he was a sinister influence manipulating Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 book about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Do I represent the evil genius in the corner that remains unseen come out of his hole? It's a nice way to work, actually."
Corporate Connections
Dispute over his commercial relationships accompanied him through his period as VP. Even though he had minimal expertise in business but good contacts in military, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial energy corporations, in 1995 as chair and top executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's running mate for the presidency. Debatably, during the military campaign, Halliburton was awarded US contracts worth multiple billions.
It greatly increased his wealth. His annual income during his period at the firm increased from his previous salary when he was defence secretary to over four million. When he left in 2000 he had a compensation package totaling more than $20m|twenty
