The deceased US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was considered among the most influential occupants of that office in US history. While numerous VPs had to settle for minor or symbolic positions, Cheney wielded substantial sway during the administration of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was commonly described as the "real president".
Bush objected to such a characterisation and stated the connection was more nuanced. He observed that Cheney was deferential, always calling him in public as Mr President, while he called him as Dick. Bush challenged even descriptions of their relationship as a partnership because it suggested that they were peers. Despite such protestations, Cheney considered the relaxed president malleable on a wide array of administrative determinations.
A Aftermath of 9/11
At the head of a contingent of neo-cons that featured military head Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been attending a session at a educational institution in Florida. As Bush made his way to a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, ordering the shooting down of any unidentified planes approaching the US Capitol.
Cheney claimed the assaults altered his perspective, causing him to be focused on retribution. Together with other neo-conservatives, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a occupation of Afghanistan in an endeavor to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the invasion of Iraq, though there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Debated Decisions
He expressed no regrets about the invasion, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis perished, nor about the harsh treatment of detainees apprehended after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was predicated on faulty reports circulated by Cheney, was the correct path to take. "It proved to be the correct action to do then. I believed it then and I hold that view presently."
However even at the time, there were dissenting voices at a high level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the government's own special envoys to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the position. "I witnessed, as a baseline," he subsequently stated "obvious failure, inaction, and recklessness: in the worst case, falsehoods, incompetence, and graft."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not entirely responsible for the Iraq invasion. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had drafted a memo detailing circumstances in which national priorities might be threatened (featuring "obtaining essential resources, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "the US should be positioned to take unilateral action when collective action cannot be orchestrated," explicitly mentioning armed actions against Iraq.
Bush too had arrived in the presidency somewhat determined on implementing what his parent had notably declined to do in 1991; topple Saddam. Subsequent to he had been fired by the president, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his plan of diminishing America's involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and suggested military action against Iraq.
Bush carried a individual resentment against Saddam, thinking he had been responsible for a plot to murder his father, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He also resented that one of the largest establishments in Baghdad had a floor mural with a image of his father's visage that each person had to step on.
Investigation Approaches
But it was Cheney who was one of the most vociferous supporting invading Iraq, consistently citing intelligence reports that were whether thin or totally misleading. He endorsed what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "advanced techniques", the employment of waterboarding and torture.
Answering a Senate report in 2014 that determined that no valuable data had been obtained through the harsh techniques, Cheney rejected the findings as "full of crap". He informed Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to take steps and establish programmes to capture the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it was not repeated. That was specifically what they did and they deserve a lot of recognition."
Public Persona
Cheney took pleasure in monikers assigned to him by detractors such as the dark character and the sinister presence, and by the idea that he was a dark force manipulating Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 volume about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Is it me who is the malevolent mastermind in the corner that operates invisibly leave his domain? That is a nice way to work, actually."
Commercial Ties
Dispute over his corporate affiliations followed him throughout his time as VP. Although he had minimal expertise in business but good contacts in security, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's largest petroleum companies, in 1995 as chairman and top executive.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's election partner for the presidency. Contentiously, during the military campaign, Halliburton was awarded US deals totaling multiple billions.
It significantly boosted his finances. His annual income during his time at the corporation grew from his $258,394 when he was Pentagon chief to over four million. When he left in 2000 he had a severance arrangement valued at over $20m|twenty
