The former US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who has died at age 84, was regarded as one of the most powerful occupants of the vice-presidency in US history. Whereas numerous vice-presidents were confined to peripheral or symbolic functions, Cheney wielded huge sway during the presidency of George W Bush, to the point that he was often called as the "real president".
Bush objected to that description and claimed the relationship was more nuanced. He pointed out that Cheney was courteous, consistently addressing him in public as the President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush challenged even portrayals of their partnership as a collaboration because it suggested that they were peers. In spite of these objections, Cheney considered the laidback president malleable on a whole raft of policy decisions.
A Aftermath of 9/11
In charge of a contingent of conservative hawks that encompassed defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been participating in a meeting at a school in Florida. Whereas Bush traveled to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, ordering the destruction of any non-communicating airplanes nearing the government building.
Cheney said the assaults altered his perspective, making him become determined on revenge. 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 pressed fiercely for the invasion of Iraq, though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Controversial Policies
He expressed no regrets about the military campaign, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, nor about the waterboarding of individuals captured after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was predicated on misleading intelligence echoed by Cheney, was the proper course of action. "It represented the correct action to do back then. I was convinced back then and I hold that view today."
But during that period, there were dissenting voices at a senior level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the government's own delegates to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the post. "I saw, at the very least," he subsequently stated "obvious failure, negligence, and unaccountability: potentially, falsehoods, incompetence, and graft."
Broader Context
Cheney was not completely accountable for the Iraq military action. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had drafted a document outlining circumstances in which American interests might be threatened (including "obtaining vital raw materials, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "America should be positioned to take unilateral action when collective action cannot be arranged," explicitly referencing military moves against Iraq.
Bush additionally had arrived in the presidency vaguely intent on carrying out what his predecessor had notably declined to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Subsequent to he had been fired by the administration, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his objective of lowering America's participation in the Middle East dispute and proposed defense operations against Iraq.
Bush carried a private grievance against Saddam, convinced he had been behind a conspiracy to murder his parent, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore resented that one of the largest establishments in Baghdad had a floor mural with a likeness of his father's face that each person had to step on.
Interrogation Methods
Yet it was Cheney who was part of the most vociferous supporting attacking Iraq, repeatedly citing information documents that were either thin or totally inaccurate. He backed what the Bush administration politely called as "enhanced interrogation", the application of waterboarding and physical pressure.
Addressing a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no valuable data had come from the torture, Cheney dismissed the findings as "loaded with crap". He informed Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to establish protocols and create programmes to apprehend the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it was not repeated. That was specifically what they did and they deserve a lot of credit."
Public Image
Cheney took pleasure in monikers given to him by detractors such as the dark character and The Prince of Darkness, and by the concept that he was a dark force directing Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 volume about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Do I represent the malevolent mastermind in the shadows that nobody ever sees emerge from his lair? This represents a effective way to function, in fact."
Commercial Ties
Debate over his commercial relationships accompanied him through his period as second-in-command. While he had limited background in corporate affairs but good contacts in security, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial energy conglomerates, in 1995 as chairman and chief executive.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's VP candidate for the White House. Contentiously, during the military campaign, Halliburton was given US deals totaling substantial sums.
It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly earnings during his time at the company increased from his previous salary when he was Pentagon chief to millions. When he departed in 2000 he had a compensation package totaling more than $20m|twenty
