The former US VP Dick Cheney, who has died at age 84, was seen as among the most influential occupants of that office in American history. While many vice-presidents were limited to marginal or figurehead roles, Cheney held huge influence during the presidency of George W Bush, so much so that he was frequently described as the "actual president".
Bush resented such a characterisation and claimed the relationship was more complicated. He pointed out that Cheney was courteous, consistently addressing him in public as President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush disputed even portrayals of their partnership as a collaboration because it suggested that they were on equal footing. Regardless of these denials, Cheney viewed the relaxed president accommodating on a whole raft of governmental choices.
The Aftermath of 9/11
At the head of a contingent of neo-conservatives that featured military head Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been participating in a meeting at a elementary school in Florida. Whereas Bush made his way to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took command, ordering the shooting down of any unidentified planes heading toward the Capitol building.
Cheney said the assaults transformed him, making him become intent on revenge. Together with other neo-cons, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a takeover of Afghanistan in an effort to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then vigorously pushed for the armed intervention of Iraq, though there was little proof of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Debated Decisions
He voiced no apologies about the armed intervention, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis died, nor about the waterboarding of suspects captured after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was predicated on faulty intelligence repeated by Cheney, was the right course of action. "It proved to be the correct action to do at that time. I had faith back then and I hold that view presently."
However even then, there were dissenting voices at a senior level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the government's own representatives to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the role. "I witnessed, as a baseline," he wrote later "clear negligence, negligence, and irresponsibility: at worst, deception, incompetence, and dishonesty."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not completely accountable for the Iraq invasion. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had written a memo setting out scenarios in which American interests might be compromised (encompassing "obtaining essential resources, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the US should be positioned to take unilateral action when joint efforts cannot be orchestrated," particularly citing defense operations against Iraq.
Bush also had assumed the Oval Office vaguely intent on carrying out what his father had notably declined to do in 1991; remove Saddam. After he had been fired by the president, the finance chief Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his plan of diminishing America's engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and suggested defense operations against Iraq.
Bush held a individual resentment against Saddam, believing he had been involved in a plot to assassinate his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally objected to that one of the largest establishments in Baghdad had a floor mural with a image of his parent's face that each person had to step on.
Investigation Approaches
However it was Cheney who was one of the most vociferous behind striking Iraq, consistently citing agency briefings that were either weak or totally deceptive. He supported what the Bush government euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation", the application of simulated drowning and harsh treatment.
Addressing a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no useful information had been obtained through the torture, Cheney dismissed the findings as "loaded with crap". He stated to Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to take steps and create initiatives to apprehend the bastards who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it was not repeated. That is precisely what they did and they deserve a lot of credit."
Public Persona
Cheney took pleasure in monikers given to him by detractors such as the Star Wars villain and The Prince of Darkness, and by the notion that he was a shadow power controlling Bush. In the journalist's 2013 publication about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Am I the malevolent mastermind in the shadows that nobody ever sees emerge from his hole? That is a effective way to operate, in fact."
Commercial Ties
Controversy over his business interests pursued him through his period as second-in-command. Even though he had minimal expertise in business but established relationships in defence, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest petroleum companies, in 1995 as leader and CEO.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's running mate for the presidency. Debatably, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was given US deals valued at billions.
It made him rich. His annual income during his tenure at the corporation increased from his $258,394 while military head to over four million. When he left in 2000 he had a severance arrangement worth over $20m|twenty
