The former US VP Dick Cheney, who has died at the age of 84, was considered among the most significant occupants of that position in American history. While numerous VPs had to settle for peripheral or ceremonial positions, Cheney held substantial influence during the administration of George W Bush, so much so that he was often referred to as the "actual president".
Bush disliked such a characterisation and stated the dynamic was more complicated. He pointed out that Cheney was deferential, consistently calling him in public as Mr President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush questioned even descriptions of their association as a partnership because it suggested that they were on equal footing. Despite such protestations, Cheney found the easygoing president malleable on a broad range of administrative determinations.
The Period Following the Attacks
At the head of a contingent of neo-conservatives that featured defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been participating in a session at a elementary school in Florida. As Bush headed for a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took command, commanding the destruction of any non-communicating airplanes nearing the government building.
Cheney said the assaults changed him, making him become intent on retaliation. Together with other conservative figures, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a invasion of Afghanistan in an endeavor to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then vigorously pushed for the armed intervention of Iraq, although there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Debated Actions
He expressed no regrets about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis died, or about the enhanced interrogation of detainees rounded up after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was founded on inaccurate intelligence repeated by Cheney, was the proper decision. "It represented the right thing to do then. I was convinced back then and I believe it presently."
But even then, there were contrary opinions at a top tier about the poor management of Iraq. One of the government's own representatives to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the post. "I saw, as a baseline," he later wrote "clear negligence, carelessness, and unaccountability: potentially, lying, incompetence, and corruption."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not completely to blame for the Iraq campaign. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for similar measures. He had composed a memo detailing circumstances in which national priorities might be compromised (including "access to crucial commodities, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the US should be positioned to operate alone when collective action cannot be arranged," specifically referencing armed actions against Iraq.
Bush additionally had assumed the Oval Office somewhat determined on implementing what his father had specifically avoided to do in 1991; topple Saddam. After he had been fired by the administration, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his plan of reducing America's participation in the Middle East dispute and proposed armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush bore a private grievance against Saddam, believing he had been responsible for a conspiracy to murder his parent, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore resented that one of the biggest establishments in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his parent's face that all visitors had to walk over.
Questioning Techniques
Yet it was Cheney who was part of the most vehement behind invading Iraq, frequently referencing information documents that were whether insubstantial or entirely inaccurate. He supported what the Bush government euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the application of waterboarding and physical pressure.
Addressing a Senate document in 2014 that determined that no actionable intelligence had come from the interrogation methods, Cheney rejected the findings as "riddled with crap". He stated to Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to establish protocols and establish procedures to apprehend the bastards who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it would not recur. That's exactly what they did and they deserve a lot of credit."
External Perception
Cheney reveled in monikers assigned to him by critics such as the dark character and The Prince of Darkness, and by the notion that he was a shadow power manipulating Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 publication about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Is it me who is the malevolent mastermind in the shadows that nobody ever sees come out of his domain? It's a nice way to function, actually."
Commercial Ties
Debate over his commercial relationships followed him during his tenure as second-in-command. Even though he had limited background in commerce but strong connections in security, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial energy conglomerates, in 1995 as chairman and chief executive.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's VP candidate for the White House. Debatably, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was granted US contracts valued at substantial sums.
It significantly boosted his finances. His yearly compensation during his tenure at the firm increased from his $258,394 when he was military head to over four million. When he resigned in 2000 he had a package valued at in excess of $20m|twenty
