The deceased US VP Dick Cheney, who has died at age 84, was regarded as arguably the most powerful holders of that office in US history. Whereas many vice-presidents were confined to minor or ceremonial positions, Cheney exercised enormous influence during the term of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was frequently referred to as the "true president".
Bush objected to this portrayal and said the connection was more complicated. He observed that Cheney was respectful, consistently referring to him in public settings as Mr President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush disputed even portrayals of their relationship as a team because it indicated that they were equals. Despite such protestations, Cheney found the easygoing president pliable on a wide array of governmental choices.
The Period Following the Attacks
Leading of a group of neo-conservatives that encompassed defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been participating in a gathering at a elementary school in Florida. While Bush made his way to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, commanding the downing of any unresponsive planes approaching the US Capitol.
Cheney claimed the assaults changed him, causing him to be intent on retaliation. Along with other neo-cons, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a takeover of Afghanistan in an effort to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, although there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Debated Policies
He showed no remorse about the armed intervention, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis perished, nor about the waterboarding of individuals apprehended after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was based on misleading reports repeated by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It represented the proper decision to do then. I believed it at the time and I believe it now."
However even then, there were opposing views at a senior level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the government's own special envoys to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the position. "I observed, at the very least," he later wrote "obvious failure, inaction, and irresponsibility: potentially, deception, ineptitude, and graft."
Broader Context
Cheney was not entirely accountable for the Iraq invasion. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had drafted a memo setting out circumstances in which American interests might be endangered (featuring "availability of crucial commodities, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the US should be positioned to act independently when joint efforts prove impossible," explicitly mentioning armed actions against Iraq.
Bush additionally had assumed the presidency vaguely intent on implementing what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; topple Saddam. After he had been dismissed by the president, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his plan of diminishing America's participation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mooted defense operations against Iraq.
Bush held a personal grudge against Saddam, believing he had been responsible for a conspiracy to kill his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally resented that one of the most prominent accommodations in Baghdad had a ground design with a likeness of his father's face that all visitors had to walk over.
Questioning Techniques
But it was Cheney who was part of the most vehement advocating invading Iraq, frequently referencing agency briefings that were both thin or totally misleading. He supported what the Bush government indirectly described as "intensive questioning", the application of waterboarding and physical pressure.
Answering a Senate analysis in 2014 that determined that no useful information had come from the interrogation methods, Cheney rejected the findings as "loaded with crap". He told Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to implement measures and create programmes to capture the individuals who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it would not recur. That was specifically what they did and they deserve a lot of credit."
Public Persona
Cheney reveled in monikers assigned to him by opponents such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the concept that he was a sinister influence directing Bush. In the journalist's 2013 publication about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Am I the malevolent mastermind in the shadows that nobody ever sees come out of his hole? That is a nice way to work, in fact."
Business Interests
Dispute over his business interests accompanied him throughout his time as VP. Although he had limited background in corporate affairs but established relationships in defence, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's largest energy corporations, in 1995 as chairman and top executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's VP candidate for the White House. Controversially, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was granted US agreements valued at billions.
It made him rich. His yearly earnings during his tenure at the corporation increased from his $258,394 while Pentagon chief to over four million. When he left in 2000 he had a severance arrangement totaling in excess of $20m|twenty
