The late US vice-president Dick Cheney, who has died at age 84, was regarded as among the most powerful occupants of the vice-presidency in the nation's history. Whereas countless second-in-commands were confined to marginal or figurehead positions, Cheney exercised huge sway during the administration of George W Bush, so much so that he was commonly referred to as the "true president".
Bush resented such a characterisation and said the dynamic was more nuanced. He noted that Cheney was deferential, always addressing him in public as President, while he called him as Dick. Bush questioned even descriptions of their partnership as a team because it implied that they were equals. In spite of these objections, Cheney found the easygoing president malleable on a broad range of administrative determinations.
A Aftermath of 9/11
At the head of a contingent of conservative hawks that included defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been attending a meeting at a educational institution in Florida. As Bush traveled to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, commanding the shooting down of any non-communicating airplanes nearing the government building.
Cheney said the assaults transformed him, making him become determined on retribution. Along with other conservative figures, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a invasion of Afghanistan in an endeavor to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the invasion of Iraq, although there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Debated Decisions
He expressed no regrets about the armed intervention, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis perished, nor about the waterboarding of detainees captured after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was predicated on faulty reports circulated by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It represented the proper decision to do at that time. I had faith back then and I maintain that stance now."
However even at the time, 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 post. "I saw, at the very least," he subsequently stated "true dereliction, inaction, and irresponsibility: at worst, deception, ineptitude, and dishonesty."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not solely to blame for the Iraq campaign. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had composed a memo outlining circumstances in which national priorities might be threatened (including "access to essential resources, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "America should be positioned to take unilateral action when cooperative measures prove impossible," explicitly mentioning defense operations against Iraq.
Bush additionally had arrived in the White House vaguely intent on carrying out what his parent had famously refused to do in 1991; topple Saddam. After he had been fired by the administration, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his objective of diminishing America's engagement in the Middle East dispute and proposed armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush bore a private grievance against Saddam, thinking he had been involved in a conspiracy to murder his parent, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally objected to that one of the largest hotels in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his father's visage that each person had to step on.
Interrogation Methods
But it was Cheney who was one of the most outspoken behind striking Iraq, repeatedly quoting intelligence reports that were either thin or entirely misleading. He backed what the Bush administration euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation", the use of simulated drowning and physical pressure.
Answering a Senate analysis in 2014 that determined that no actionable intelligence had come from the harsh techniques, Cheney disregarded the conclusions as "loaded with crap". He informed Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to implement measures and create initiatives to capture the perpetrators who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it would not recur. That's exactly what they did and they earn a lot of recognition."
Public Persona
Cheney took pleasure in monikers assigned to him by detractors such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the concept that he was a shadow power controlling Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 publication about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Am I the malevolent mastermind in the shadows that remains unseen emerge from his lair? It's a advantageous way to operate, actually."
Corporate Connections
Debate over his corporate affiliations accompanied him throughout his time as second-in-command. Even though he had little experience in business but strong connections in security, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's biggest petroleum companies, in 1995 as chairman and chief executive.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's election partner for the executive branch. Controversially, during the military campaign, Halliburton was awarded US contracts valued at multiple billions.
It significantly boosted his finances. His yearly earnings during his tenure at the corporation increased from his $258,394 during his time as defence secretary to over four million. When he resigned in 2000 he had a package worth over $20m|twenty
