The deceased US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who died at the age of 84, was considered among the most influential occupants of that position in the nation's history. Although numerous VPs were limited to minor or symbolic functions, Cheney exercised substantial sway during the administration of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was often described as the "actual president".
Bush disliked that description and claimed the connection was more nuanced. He noted that Cheney was respectful, consistently addressing him in official appearances as President, while he called him as Dick. Bush challenged even portrayals of their partnership as a partnership because it suggested that they were peers. In spite of these objections, Cheney found the relaxed president pliable on a broad range of policy decisions.
A Aftermath of 9/11
At the head of a group of conservative hawks that included Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been participating in a gathering at a elementary school in Florida. Whereas Bush traveled to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took command, ordering the destruction of any non-communicating airplanes approaching the US Capitol.
Cheney claimed the attacks transformed him, leading him to become focused on revenge. Together with other neo-conservatives, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a takeover of Afghanistan in an endeavor to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, although there was little proof of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Debated Actions
He voiced no apologies about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis died, or about the waterboarding of detainees captured after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was predicated on misleading reports echoed by Cheney, was the proper decision. "It was the right thing to do back then. I was convinced back then and I hold that view now."
But during that period, there were dissenting voices at a senior level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the government's own delegates to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the position. "I saw, at a minimum," he wrote later "clear negligence, carelessness, and irresponsibility: potentially, lying, ineptitude, and graft."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not solely accountable for the Iraq military action. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had written a document setting out scenarios in which American interests might be endangered (featuring "access to essential resources, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the United States should be positioned to operate alone when joint efforts prove impossible," explicitly citing military moves against Iraq.
Bush additionally had entered the White House generally inclined on executing what his parent had specifically avoided to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. After he had been sacked by the president, the finance chief Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his plan of reducing America's participation in the regional tensions and suggested defense operations against Iraq.
Bush held a personal grudge against Saddam, believing he had been responsible for a plot to assassinate his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally objected to that one of the largest accommodations in Baghdad had a floor mural with a likeness of his parent's visage that all visitors had to tread upon.
Interrogation Methods
However it was Cheney who was one of the most vehement supporting striking Iraq, consistently quoting intelligence reports that were either weak or entirely inaccurate. He backed what the Bush government indirectly described as "advanced techniques", the application of simulated drowning and torture.
Answering a Senate analysis in 2014 that determined that no valuable data had been obtained through the harsh techniques, Cheney disregarded the report as "full of crap". He told Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to implement measures and establish initiatives to apprehend the perpetrators who took the lives of 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 praise."
External Perception
Cheney enjoyed monikers given to him by opponents such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the notion that he was a dark force directing Bush. In the journalist's 2013 publication about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Am I the evil genius in the background that remains unseen leave his domain? It's a advantageous way to function, actually."
Corporate Connections
Controversy over his commercial relationships accompanied him during his tenure as VP. Although he had limited background in corporate affairs but good contacts in security, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial oil and gas corporations, in 1995 as chair and CEO.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's VP candidate for the White House. Controversially, during the military campaign, Halliburton was granted US agreements worth billions.
It greatly increased his wealth. His annual income during his tenure at the firm rose from his quarter-million dollars when he was defence secretary to millions. When he left in 2000 he had a severance arrangement valued at over $20m|twenty
