The late US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was regarded as one of the most influential holders of the vice-presidency in the nation's history. Although many vice-presidents had to settle for peripheral or symbolic positions, Cheney exercised substantial power during the administration of George W Bush, to the point that he was commonly called as the "true president".
Bush disliked that description and stated the connection was more nuanced. He observed that Cheney was courteous, invariably referring to him in public as President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush challenged even descriptions of their association as a partnership because it indicated that they were peers. Despite such protestations, Cheney considered the laidback president pliable on a whole raft of governmental choices.
The Post-9/11 Era
In charge of a contingent of neo-cons that encompassed Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been taking part in a meeting at a elementary school in Florida. While Bush made his way to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, commanding the destruction of any unresponsive aircraft heading toward the government building.
Cheney said the strikes transformed him, leading him to become intent on revenge. Along with other neo-cons, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a takeover of Afghanistan in an effort to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the armed intervention of Iraq, though there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Debated Policies
He expressed no regrets about the invasion, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis perished, or about the waterboarding of individuals rounded up after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was founded on misleading information echoed by Cheney, was the proper decision. "It represented the right thing to do back then. I was convinced back then and I maintain that stance now."
Yet even then, there were dissenting voices at a high level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the government's own special envoys to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the post. "I saw, at the very least," he later wrote "obvious failure, inaction, and recklessness: in the worst case, deception, incompetence, and dishonesty."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not completely accountable for the Iraq military action. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had composed a document setting out situations in which national priorities might be compromised (encompassing "access to essential resources, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the US should be postured to take unilateral action when cooperative measures prove impossible," particularly mentioning military moves against Iraq.
Bush also had arrived in the White House vaguely intent on implementing what his parent had specifically avoided to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. Subsequent to he had been dismissed by the president, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his objective of lowering America's participation in the regional tensions and mooted defense operations against Iraq.
Bush bore a private grievance against Saddam, believing he had been behind a conspiracy to assassinate his father, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore resented that one of the biggest establishments in Baghdad had a ground design with a likeness of his parent's visage that everyone had to step on.
Interrogation Methods
But it was Cheney who was part of the most vehement behind striking Iraq, consistently referencing agency briefings that were whether insubstantial or entirely inaccurate. He endorsed what the Bush government indirectly described as "intensive questioning", the use of waterboarding and physical pressure.
Responding to a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no actionable intelligence had come from the interrogation methods, Cheney rejected the report as "riddled with crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to implement measures and put in place programmes to catch the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and ensure it would not recur. That's exactly what they did and they deserve a lot of recognition."
Public Persona
Cheney reveled in monikers imposed on him by detractors such as the Star Wars villain and the sinister presence, and by the notion that he was a sinister influence 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: "Is it me who is the malevolent mastermind in the background that operates invisibly leave his hole? It's a effective way to operate, in fact."
Business Interests
Controversy over his commercial relationships pursued him during his tenure as vice-president. While he had minimal expertise in corporate affairs but established relationships in military, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's largest petroleum conglomerates, in 1995 as chair and CEO.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's VP candidate for the presidency. Debatably, during the military campaign, Halliburton was awarded US contracts worth multiple billions.
It significantly boosted his finances. His annual income during his period at the company rose from his previous salary while military head to millions. When he left in 2000 he had a compensation package totaling in excess of $20m|twenty
