The deceased US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who died at age 84, was seen as arguably the most influential occupants of that position in American history. Although countless VPs had to settle for minor or symbolic positions, Cheney exercised substantial power during the administration of George W Bush, so much so that he was commonly described as the "real president".
Bush disliked this portrayal and said the connection was more complex. He noted that Cheney was deferential, consistently calling him in public as the President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush questioned even characterisations of their partnership as a collaboration because it indicated that they were on equal footing. In spite of these objections, Cheney considered the easygoing president pliable on a wide array of administrative determinations.
The Post-9/11 Era
Leading of a group of neo-cons that encompassed Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been attending a meeting at a school in Florida. While Bush headed for a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took command, ordering the destruction of any unidentified airplanes nearing the Capitol building.
Cheney stated the attacks altered his perspective, causing him to be focused on retribution. Along with other conservative figures, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a invasion of Afghanistan in an effort to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Disputed Actions
He expressed no regrets about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis died, nor about the enhanced interrogation of individuals captured after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was based on inaccurate intelligence repeated by Cheney, was the right decision. "It proved to be the right thing to do at that time. I had faith then and I hold that view presently."
But during that period, there were contrary opinions at a high level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the White House's own special envoys to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the position. "I saw, as a baseline," he later wrote "clear negligence, carelessness, and unaccountability: at worst, falsehoods, unfitness, and corruption."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not entirely to blame for the Iraq military action. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for similar measures. He had composed a memorandum setting out circumstances in which US concerns might be threatened (encompassing "access to essential resources, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "America should be prepared to act independently when collective action cannot be arranged," particularly referencing armed actions against Iraq.
Bush additionally had entered the Oval Office vaguely intent on carrying out what his predecessor had specifically avoided to do in 1991; topple Saddam. After he had been fired by the president, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his plan of diminishing America's participation in the Middle East dispute and proposed military action against Iraq.
Bush held a personal grudge against Saddam, convinced he had been behind a conspiracy to murder his father, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally objected to that one of the largest accommodations in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a portrait of his parent's visage that all visitors had to walk over.
Interrogation Methods
But it was Cheney who was one of the most outspoken advocating attacking Iraq, frequently citing information documents that were both thin or entirely deceptive. He supported what the Bush White House politely called as "advanced techniques", the employment of interrogation method and torture.
Answering a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no valuable data had come from the torture, Cheney dismissed the findings as "riddled with crap". He informed Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to establish protocols and create procedures to catch the individuals who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it was not repeated. That's exactly what they did and they deserve a lot of credit."
Public Image
Cheney enjoyed nicknames given to him by detractors such as Darth Vader and the dark figure, and by the notion that he was a shadow power controlling Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 book about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Do I represent the malevolent mastermind in the background that nobody ever sees come out of his lair? That is a advantageous way to function, actually."
Business Interests
Dispute over his corporate affiliations accompanied him throughout his time as second-in-command. While he had minimal expertise in commerce but good contacts in defence, 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. Contentiously, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was given US deals valued at billions.
It made him rich. His annual income during his tenure at the firm grew from his previous salary during his time as military head to millions. When he left in 2000 he had a severance arrangement worth more than $20m|twenty
