The deceased US VP Dick Cheney, who has died at age 84, was seen as one of the most significant occupants of that office in US history. Although many VPs were limited to marginal or ceremonial positions, Cheney exercised enormous influence during the term of George W Bush, so much so that he was commonly described as the "actual president".
Bush resented that description and claimed the dynamic was more complicated. He observed that Cheney was courteous, invariably calling him in official appearances as Mr President, while he called him as Dick. Bush questioned even characterisations of their relationship as a team because it implied that they were peers. In spite of such protestations, Cheney viewed the relaxed president malleable on a whole raft of governmental choices.
The Period Following the Attacks
At the head of a contingent of neo-cons that encompassed Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been attending a session at a educational institution in Florida. While Bush traveled to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took command, commanding the downing of any unidentified aircraft approaching the government building.
Cheney claimed the strikes changed him, causing him to be determined on revenge. Together with other conservative figures, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a takeover of Afghanistan in an effort to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Debated Decisions
He expressed no regrets about the armed intervention, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis perished, and not about the enhanced interrogation of detainees rounded up after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was founded on misleading intelligence circulated by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It was the correct action to do at that time. I had faith then and I believe it presently."
But during that period, there were contrary opinions at a high level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the administration's own delegates to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the position. "I witnessed, at the very least," he wrote later "true dereliction, carelessness, and unaccountability: potentially, falsehoods, unfitness, and graft."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not completely accountable for the Iraq military action. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for similar measures. He had written a memorandum detailing situations in which American interests might be compromised (encompassing "access to essential resources, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "America should be positioned to act independently when cooperative measures cannot be orchestrated," explicitly citing armed actions against Iraq.
Bush too had entered the presidency vaguely intent on executing what his parent had specifically avoided to do in 1991; remove Saddam. After he had been dismissed by the White House, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his intention of lowering America's involvement in the regional tensions and mooted defense operations against Iraq.
Bush held a private grievance against Saddam, convinced he had been involved in a scheme to murder his father, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally disliked that one of the biggest accommodations in Baghdad had a ground design with a portrait of his parent's face that all visitors had to tread upon.
Investigation Approaches
However it was Cheney who was among the most vociferous supporting invading Iraq, frequently referencing agency briefings that were whether insubstantial or entirely inaccurate. He endorsed what the Bush White House politely called as "intensive questioning", the use of simulated drowning and harsh treatment.
Answering a Senate report in 2014 that determined that no actionable intelligence had come from the torture, Cheney disregarded the report as "full of crap". He told Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to take steps and create programmes to catch the perpetrators who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and ensure it was not repeated. That's exactly what they did and they earn a lot of recognition."
Public Image
Cheney reveled in monikers assigned to him by detractors such as the dark character and The Prince of Darkness, and by the notion that he was a sinister influence manipulating Bush. In the journalist's 2013 volume about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Am I the sinister strategist in the shadows that nobody ever sees come out of his lair? It's a nice way to work, truthfully."
Commercial Ties
Controversy over his business interests accompanied him during his tenure as vice-president. Although he had minimal expertise in corporate affairs but strong connections in security, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest petroleum corporations, in 1995 as chair and top executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's running mate for the executive branch. Debatably, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was granted US deals totaling substantial sums.
It made him rich. His yearly compensation during his time at the corporation increased from his quarter-million dollars during his time as military head to over four million. When he resigned in 2000 he had a package totaling over $20m|twenty
