The former US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who has died at the age of 84, was regarded as among the most influential holders of that position in American history. While numerous VPs were limited to minor or ceremonial positions, Cheney exercised enormous influence during the presidency of George W Bush, to the point that he was often referred to as the "real president".
Bush disliked that description and claimed the relationship was more complicated. He observed that Cheney was courteous, consistently addressing him in public settings as Mr President, while he called him as Dick. Bush challenged even characterisations of their association as a team because it indicated that they were on equal footing. Regardless of these objections, Cheney considered the relaxed president pliable on a broad range of administrative determinations.
A Aftermath of 9/11
At the head of a group of conservative hawks that encompassed defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the invasion 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 session at a school in Florida. As Bush made his way to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took command, directing the shooting down of any unresponsive planes approaching the Capitol building.
Cheney said the assaults altered his perspective, leading him to become intent on revenge. In conjunction with other conservative figures, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a invasion of Afghanistan in an effort to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the military action of Iraq, though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Debated Decisions
He voiced no apologies about the invasion, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, and not about the enhanced interrogation of individuals captured after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was predicated on misleading information repeated by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It was the proper decision to do then. I believed it back then and I believe it today."
However even then, there were dissenting voices at a senior level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the administration's own special envoys to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the position. "I saw, at the very least," he wrote later "true dereliction, negligence, and irresponsibility: in the worst case, deception, unfitness, and graft."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not entirely accountable for the Iraq military action. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had drafted a document setting out circumstances in which national priorities might be endangered (featuring "access to crucial commodities, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the United States should be positioned to take unilateral action when cooperative measures cannot be arranged," specifically referencing armed actions against Iraq.
Bush also had arrived in the presidency vaguely intent on carrying out what his predecessor had famously refused to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Following he had been dismissed by the president, the finance chief Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his plan of lowering America's engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and proposed military action against Iraq.
Bush held a personal grudge against Saddam, convinced he had been involved in a scheme to kill his parent, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He also resented that one of the largest hotels in Baghdad had a ground design with a portrait of his predecessor's visage that all visitors had to step on.
Investigation Approaches
But it was Cheney who was part of the most vociferous behind striking Iraq, consistently quoting intelligence reports that were both weak or completely inaccurate. He backed what the Bush White House politely called as "enhanced interrogation", the employment of waterboarding and harsh treatment.
Responding to a Senate report in 2014 that found that no valuable data had come from the torture, Cheney dismissed the findings as "loaded with crap". He informed Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to take steps and create programmes to capture the perpetrators who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and ensure it was not repeated. That is precisely what they did and they deserve a lot of praise."
External Perception
Cheney reveled in labels given to him by critics such as the Star Wars villain and the dark figure, and by the notion that he was a shadow power manipulating Bush. In the author's 2013 publication about the pair, 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 shadows that remains unseen emerge from his lair? That is a advantageous way to operate, actually."
Business Interests
Debate over his corporate affiliations followed him through his period as VP. While he had little experience in commerce but established relationships in military, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's largest energy companies, in 1995 as chairman and top executive.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's running mate for the executive branch. Contentiously, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was given US contracts worth substantial sums.
It greatly increased his wealth. His annual income during his tenure at the company grew from his quarter-million dollars when he was defence secretary to over four million. When he departed in 2000 he had a severance arrangement worth in excess of $20m|twenty
