The late US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who died at the age of 84, was seen as arguably the most powerful occupants of that position in American history. While countless vice-presidents were confined to marginal or figurehead functions, Cheney exercised substantial influence during the term of George W Bush, so much so that he was frequently called as the "actual president".
Bush resented this portrayal and claimed the relationship was more complex. He pointed out that Cheney was deferential, always addressing him in public as Mr President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush questioned even portrayals of their relationship as a collaboration because it suggested that they were peers. Despite these objections, Cheney considered the laidback president malleable on a whole raft of governmental choices.
The Aftermath of 9/11
In charge of a contingent of neo-conservatives that featured Pentagon chief 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. When of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been taking part in a meeting at a educational institution in Florida. While Bush made his way to a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney took command, commanding the destruction of any unidentified planes heading toward the government building.
Cheney said the assaults transformed him, leading him to become intent on revenge. Together with other neo-conservatives, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a takeover of Afghanistan in an endeavor to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the invasion of Iraq, although there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Disputed Actions
He expressed no regrets about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, nor about the harsh treatment of individuals rounded up after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was founded on inaccurate intelligence repeated by Cheney, was the correct decision. "It proved to be the right thing to do then. I believed it then and I believe it today."
Yet even at the time, there were contrary opinions at a top tier about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the administration's own special envoys to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the position. "I witnessed, as a baseline," he later wrote "clear negligence, inaction, and recklessness: potentially, falsehoods, unfitness, and graft."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not solely responsible for the Iraq invasion. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had drafted a memo detailing situations in which US concerns might be threatened (featuring "access to crucial commodities, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "the US should be positioned to act independently when joint efforts cannot be arranged," specifically referencing defense operations against Iraq.
Bush also had assumed the White House generally inclined on implementing what his predecessor had specifically avoided to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Subsequent to he had been dismissed by the administration, the finance chief Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his plan of lowering America's involvement in the Middle East dispute and proposed armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush held a individual resentment against Saddam, convinced he had been responsible for a conspiracy to assassinate his father, 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 ground design with a likeness of his father's visage that each person had to step on.
Investigation Approaches
However it was Cheney who was part of the most outspoken supporting invading Iraq, repeatedly referencing agency briefings that were both insubstantial or entirely inaccurate. He backed what the Bush government politely called as "intensive questioning", the employment of simulated drowning and harsh treatment.
Responding to a Senate analysis in 2014 that found that no valuable data had resulted from the torture, Cheney rejected the findings as "loaded with crap". He told Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to establish protocols and establish initiatives to capture the individuals who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it was not repeated. That was specifically what they did and they earn a lot of praise."
External Perception
Cheney took pleasure in labels assigned to him by detractors such as the dark character and The Prince of Darkness, and by the notion that he was a shadow power directing Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 volume about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Do I represent the sinister strategist in the shadows that nobody ever sees leave his domain? That is a effective way to work, in fact."
Commercial Ties
Controversy over his commercial relationships pursued him during his tenure as vice-president. While he had limited background in business but strong connections in security, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's biggest petroleum conglomerates, in 1995 as chair and CEO.
In 2000 he became Bush's election partner for the executive branch. Controversially, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was given US deals worth multiple billions.
It made him rich. His yearly earnings during his time at the firm grew from his $258,394 during his time as military head to millions. When he resigned in 2000 he had a severance arrangement valued at in excess of $20m|twenty
