The late US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at the age of 84, was regarded as one of the most significant incumbents of the vice-presidency in the nation's history. Whereas numerous vice-presidents were limited to minor or ceremonial positions, Cheney held huge influence during the term of George W Bush, so much so that he was commonly referred to as the "actual president".
Bush objected to such a characterisation and said the connection was more complicated. He observed that Cheney was deferential, invariably calling him in public as President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush questioned even portrayals of their association as a partnership because it implied that they were on equal footing. Despite these denials, Cheney viewed the relaxed president accommodating on a wide array of administrative determinations.
Leading of a faction of neo-cons that encompassed military head Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been attending a meeting at a elementary school in Florida. Whereas Bush traveled to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took command, ordering the shooting down of any unidentified airplanes approaching the Capitol building.
Cheney claimed the attacks altered his perspective, making him become determined on retaliation. Together with other neo-conservatives, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a occupation of Afghanistan in an effort to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the military action of Iraq, although there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
He voiced no apologies about the armed intervention, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis perished, and not about the waterboarding of detainees apprehended after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was based on faulty intelligence echoed by Cheney, was the correct decision. "It proved to be the right thing to do at that time. I was convinced back then and I hold that view today."
However even at the time, there were contrary opinions at a senior level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the government's own representatives to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the role. "I observed, at a minimum," he subsequently stated "clear negligence, negligence, and unaccountability: at worst, deception, incompetence, and corruption."
Cheney was not completely accountable for the Iraq military action. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for such action. He had written a memorandum setting out circumstances in which US concerns might be endangered (encompassing "access to crucial commodities, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "the United States should be positioned to operate alone when joint efforts cannot be arranged," particularly referencing military moves against Iraq.
Bush additionally had assumed the Oval Office somewhat determined on implementing what his father had specifically avoided to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Subsequent to he had been dismissed by the president, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his intention of lowering America's engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and proposed defense operations against Iraq.
Bush carried a individual resentment against Saddam, believing he had been behind a plot to assassinate his parent, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore objected to that one of the most prominent hotels in Baghdad had a ground design with a image of his parent's visage that everyone had to tread upon.
But it was Cheney who was one of the most outspoken advocating attacking Iraq, consistently quoting intelligence reports that were whether insubstantial or totally inaccurate. He backed what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the employment of interrogation method and harsh treatment.
Answering a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no valuable data had resulted from the torture, Cheney rejected the report as "full of crap". He informed Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to take steps and create initiatives to capture the individuals who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it never happened again. That was specifically what they did and they earn a lot of credit."
Cheney took pleasure in labels imposed on him by opponents such as the Star Wars villain and The Prince of Darkness, and by the notion that he was a sinister influence 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 evil genius in the shadows that nobody ever sees leave his lair? That is a effective way to function, in fact."
Dispute over his corporate affiliations pursued him throughout his time as VP. While he had minimal expertise in business but good contacts in military, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's largest petroleum companies, in 1995 as leader and top executive.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's running mate for the executive branch. Controversially, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was awarded US agreements worth substantial sums.
It made him rich. His yearly compensation during his period at the corporation grew from his previous salary while defence secretary to over four million. When he left in 2000 he had a package valued at in excess of $20m|twenty
