The deceased US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was seen as one of the most influential incumbents of the vice-presidency in the nation's history. Although many vice-presidents had to settle for minor or ceremonial positions, Cheney exercised enormous sway during the administration of George W Bush, so much so that he was often described as the "actual president".
Bush disliked such a characterisation and stated the relationship was more nuanced. He pointed out that Cheney was courteous, invariably referring to him in public as the President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush challenged even descriptions of their partnership as a partnership because it suggested that they were peers. Regardless of such protestations, Cheney found the laidback president accommodating on a broad range of administrative determinations.
A Period Following the Attacks
Leading of a contingent of conservative hawks that encompassed military head Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the military intervention 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 participating in a meeting at a elementary school in Florida. As Bush headed for a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took command, directing the destruction of any non-communicating aircraft heading toward the Capitol building.
Cheney claimed the strikes altered his perspective, leading him to become intent on retribution. Together with other neo-cons, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a takeover of Afghanistan in an effort to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then vigorously pushed for the invasion of Iraq, although there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Controversial Actions
He voiced no apologies about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, or about the enhanced interrogation of individuals captured after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was founded on misleading reports echoed by Cheney, was the right course of action. "It was the right thing to do back then. I believed it back then and I maintain that stance presently."
But even at the time, there were dissenting voices at a high level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the White House's own representatives to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the post. "I observed, as a baseline," he later wrote "clear negligence, carelessness, and unaccountability: at worst, deception, ineptitude, and graft."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not completely to blame for the Iraq campaign. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for such action. He had written a memo setting out scenarios in which national priorities might be threatened (including "availability of essential resources, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "America should be positioned to operate alone when cooperative measures prove impossible," explicitly referencing armed actions against Iraq.
Bush too had arrived in the presidency generally inclined on implementing what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; topple Saddam. Subsequent to he had been dismissed by the White House, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his objective of diminishing America's involvement in the Middle East dispute and suggested military action against Iraq.
Bush bore a private grievance against Saddam, believing he had been responsible for a plot to murder his father, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore objected to that one of the biggest hotels in Baghdad had a ground design with a likeness of his predecessor's face that all visitors had to walk over.
Questioning Techniques
But it was Cheney who was among the most vociferous supporting attacking Iraq, repeatedly citing agency briefings that were whether thin or totally deceptive. He backed what the Bush government euphemistically referred to as "advanced techniques", the use of interrogation method and physical pressure.
Responding to a Senate analysis in 2014 that determined that no actionable intelligence had been obtained through the interrogation methods, Cheney dismissed the report as "full of crap". He told Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to implement measures and establish initiatives to capture the individuals who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it never happened again. That is precisely what they did and they deserve a lot of recognition."
External Perception
Cheney took pleasure in labels given to him by detractors such as the Star Wars villain and the sinister presence, and by the notion that he was a shadow power controlling Bush. In the journalist's 2013 publication about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Do I represent the malevolent mastermind in the shadows that remains unseen come out of his lair? That is a nice way to function, in fact."
Corporate Connections
Debate over his commercial relationships followed him during his tenure as second-in-command. While he had minimal expertise in business but good contacts in security, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial petroleum corporations, in 1995 as chair and chief executive.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's running mate for the White House. Controversially, during the military campaign, Halliburton was given US agreements worth multiple billions.
It significantly boosted his finances. His yearly earnings during his tenure at the firm rose from his quarter-million dollars during his time as Pentagon chief to $4.4m. When he left in 2000 he had a package worth more than $20m|twenty
