The deceased US VP Dick Cheney, who died at age 84, was seen as one of the most powerful occupants of that office in the nation's history. While countless VPs were limited to minor or figurehead functions, Cheney wielded huge sway during the presidency of George W Bush, so much so that he was frequently called as the "actual president".
Bush disliked such a characterisation and stated the relationship was more nuanced. He pointed out that Cheney was courteous, always calling him in public as Mr President, while he called him as Dick. Bush questioned even characterisations of their relationship as a partnership because it implied that they were equals. In spite of these objections, Cheney viewed the laidback president pliable on a wide array of administrative determinations.
A Post-9/11 Era
Leading of a contingent of neo-conservatives that featured military head Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been participating in a session at a elementary school in Florida. As Bush headed for a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, ordering the downing of any unidentified airplanes heading toward the Capitol building.
Cheney stated the assaults transformed him, making him become intent on retribution. Along with other conservative figures, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a takeover of Afghanistan in an endeavor to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the military action of Iraq, although there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Debated Actions
He expressed no regrets about the armed intervention, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis died, nor about the enhanced interrogation of individuals rounded up after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was predicated on inaccurate reports echoed by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It was the right thing to do at that time. I believed it back then and I believe it now."
However even then, there were opposing views at a top tier about the poor management of Iraq. One of the White House's own representatives to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the position. "I saw, at a minimum," he later wrote "true dereliction, negligence, and recklessness: potentially, falsehoods, ineptitude, and graft."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not entirely accountable for the Iraq invasion. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for similar measures. He had drafted a memo setting out circumstances in which US concerns might be compromised (encompassing "obtaining crucial commodities, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "America should be positioned to take unilateral action when joint efforts cannot be orchestrated," explicitly referencing military moves against Iraq.
Bush additionally had assumed the White House vaguely intent on executing what his predecessor had notably declined to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. After he had been sacked by the president, the finance chief Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his objective of lowering America's engagement in the regional tensions and proposed armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush bore a personal grudge against Saddam, convinced he had been behind a plot to kill his parent, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally disliked that one of the most prominent establishments in Baghdad had a floor mural with a image of his parent's face that each person had to step on.
Questioning Techniques
But it was Cheney who was part of the most vociferous behind invading Iraq, consistently citing information documents that were either thin or totally deceptive. He endorsed what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the employment of waterboarding and physical pressure.
Responding to a Senate document in 2014 that determined that no useful information had come from the interrogation methods, Cheney disregarded the conclusions as "loaded with crap". He stated to Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to establish protocols and put in place procedures to catch the individuals who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it never happened again. That is precisely what they did and they merit a lot of recognition."
Public Image
Cheney took pleasure in nicknames assigned to him by detractors such as the Star Wars villain and The Prince of Darkness, and by the concept that he was a dark force controlling Bush. In the author's 2013 book about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Do I represent the sinister strategist in the shadows that nobody ever sees come out of his lair? It's a effective way to operate, truthfully."
Corporate Connections
Debate over his commercial relationships pursued him throughout his time as VP. While he had little experience in commerce but strong connections in defence, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's largest petroleum corporations, in 1995 as leader and top executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's VP candidate for the executive branch. Contentiously, during the military campaign, Halliburton was granted US contracts worth billions.
It made him rich. His annual income during his period at the firm grew from his previous salary while military head to over four million. When he departed in 2000 he had a severance arrangement totaling over $20m|twenty
