The former US VP Dick Cheney, who has died at age 84, was considered one of the most significant holders of the vice-presidency in American history. Although many VPs were limited to minor or symbolic functions, Cheney exercised enormous sway during the presidency of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was often called as the "actual president".
Bush objected to that description and said the connection was more nuanced. He observed that Cheney was deferential, invariably calling him in public settings as Mr President, while he called him as Dick. Bush challenged even descriptions of their association as a partnership because it indicated that they were peers. Despite such protestations, Cheney viewed the relaxed president malleable on a broad range of administrative determinations.
A Period Following the Attacks
In charge of a faction of conservative hawks that included military head Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been attending a meeting at a elementary school in Florida. While Bush traveled to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, directing the destruction of any unresponsive planes heading toward the Capitol building.
Cheney said the attacks transformed him, causing him to be intent on revenge. Along with other conservative figures, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a takeover of Afghanistan in an attempt to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the invasion of Iraq, even though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Disputed Policies
He expressed no regrets about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis died, and not about the waterboarding of suspects rounded up after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was founded on faulty information circulated by Cheney, was the correct path to take. "It proved to be the right thing to do then. I believed it then and I maintain that stance today."
However even then, there were contrary opinions at a high level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the government's own representatives to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the post. "I observed, as a baseline," he later wrote "clear negligence, carelessness, and unaccountability: potentially, lying, incompetence, and graft."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not solely to blame for the Iraq military action. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for such action. He had written a memorandum detailing situations in which US concerns might be threatened (encompassing "availability of crucial commodities, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "America should be positioned to act independently when cooperative measures cannot be orchestrated," explicitly mentioning military moves against Iraq.
Bush too had assumed the White House vaguely intent on carrying out what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Following he had been dismissed by the president, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his plan of lowering America's involvement in the Middle East dispute and mooted armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush carried a private grievance against Saddam, thinking he had been responsible for a conspiracy to kill his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally objected to that one of the most prominent accommodations in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a portrait of his predecessor's visage that everyone had to step on.
Interrogation Methods
Yet it was Cheney who was one of the most vehement behind attacking Iraq, consistently quoting intelligence reports that were whether insubstantial or totally deceptive. He supported what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the application of simulated drowning and physical pressure.
Answering a Senate report in 2014 that concluded that no valuable data had come from the interrogation methods, Cheney dismissed the report as "loaded with crap". He told Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to establish protocols and put in place procedures to apprehend the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it was not repeated. That's exactly what they did and they merit a lot of praise."
Public Persona
Cheney took pleasure in nicknames given to him by critics such as the dark character and the sinister presence, and by the concept that he was a dark force controlling Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 volume about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Is it me who is the evil genius in the shadows that operates invisibly come out of his domain? This represents a nice way to work, truthfully."
Corporate Connections
Dispute over his corporate affiliations accompanied him throughout his time as vice-president. Although he had little experience in corporate affairs but strong connections in defence, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's biggest petroleum corporations, in 1995 as leader and chief executive.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's running mate for the presidency. Controversially, during the military campaign, Halliburton was given US agreements worth billions.
It made him rich. His annual income during his period at the corporation rose from his previous salary when he was defence secretary to millions. When he left in 2000 he had a package totaling in excess of $20m|twenty
