The deceased US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at the age of 84, was seen as among the most powerful occupants of the vice-presidency in the nation's history. While numerous VPs were limited to marginal or figurehead functions, Cheney held huge sway during the presidency of George W Bush, to the point that he was often called as the "actual president".
Bush resented such a characterisation and claimed the connection was more complicated. He pointed out that Cheney was courteous, consistently addressing him in official appearances as Mr President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush disputed even portrayals of their partnership as a partnership because it suggested that they were on equal footing. In spite of these denials, Cheney viewed the laidback president pliable on a wide array of policy decisions.
A Aftermath of 9/11
At the head of a faction of neo-cons that featured Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been participating in a session at a elementary school in Florida. While Bush traveled to a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, ordering the shooting down of any unresponsive planes approaching the government building.
Cheney said the attacks changed him, making him become intent on retaliation. Together with other neo-cons, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a invasion of Afghanistan in an endeavor to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, even though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Controversial Actions
He expressed no regrets about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis perished, or about the waterboarding of suspects rounded up after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was founded on inaccurate intelligence repeated by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It represented the right thing to do then. I was convinced at the time and I hold that view today."
However during that period, there were dissenting voices at a high level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the White House's own representatives to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the post. "I observed, at a minimum," he subsequently stated "obvious failure, carelessness, and recklessness: potentially, falsehoods, ineptitude, and corruption."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not entirely to blame for the Iraq military action. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for such action. He had composed a memorandum outlining situations in which national priorities might be endangered (encompassing "availability of vital raw materials, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "the United States should be postured to take unilateral action when joint efforts cannot be orchestrated," specifically mentioning defense operations against Iraq.
Bush too had assumed the Oval Office generally inclined on executing what his predecessor had famously refused to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. Subsequent to he had been dismissed by the White House, the finance chief Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his plan of reducing America's participation in the Middle East dispute and mooted armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush carried a private grievance against Saddam, convinced he had been involved in a conspiracy to murder his father, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally objected to that one of the largest hotels in Baghdad had a ground design with a portrait of his parent's visage that all visitors had to tread upon.
Questioning Techniques
But it was Cheney who was part of the most vehement supporting striking Iraq, consistently referencing agency briefings that were both weak or totally misleading. He endorsed what the Bush White House indirectly described as "enhanced interrogation", the application of simulated drowning and physical pressure.
Responding to a Senate analysis in 2014 that found that no valuable data had resulted from the interrogation methods, Cheney rejected the report as "riddled with crap". He told Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to establish protocols and establish initiatives to apprehend the individuals who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and ensure it was not repeated. That was specifically what they did and they deserve a lot of recognition."
Public Image
Cheney enjoyed monikers assigned to him by detractors such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the concept that he was a shadow power controlling Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 publication about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Am I the sinister strategist in the shadows that nobody ever sees leave his hole? This represents a effective way to operate, in fact."
Commercial Ties
Debate over his corporate affiliations followed him through his period 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 most substantial oil and gas corporations, in 1995 as chairman and chief executive.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's VP candidate for the executive branch. Debatably, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was awarded US agreements worth substantial sums.
It made him rich. His annual income during his tenure at the company grew from his previous salary while Pentagon chief to millions. When he resigned in 2000 he had a compensation package totaling over $20m|twenty
