The late US vice-president Dick Cheney, who has died at age 84, was considered arguably the most influential incumbents of that office in the nation's history. While many VPs were confined to marginal or symbolic positions, Cheney wielded substantial influence during the administration of George W Bush, to the point that he was commonly called as the "real president".
Bush objected to that description and claimed the connection was more nuanced. He pointed out that Cheney was respectful, consistently referring to him in public as Mr President, while he called him as Dick. Bush disputed even descriptions of their association as a partnership because it implied that they were peers. Despite these denials, Cheney considered the easygoing president malleable on a whole raft of administrative determinations.
A Aftermath of 9/11
In charge of a contingent of neo-cons that encompassed Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in response to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been attending a meeting at a elementary school in Florida. As Bush made his way to a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, commanding the shooting down of any non-communicating airplanes approaching the Capitol building.
Cheney said the assaults changed him, leading him to become focused on retaliation. In conjunction with other neo-cons, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a occupation of Afghanistan in an endeavor to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, even though there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Debated Decisions
He expressed no regrets about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis died, or about the waterboarding of detainees captured after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was predicated on faulty intelligence echoed by Cheney, was the right path to take. "It proved to be the proper decision to do back then. I believed it at the time and I believe it today."
But even then, there were dissenting voices at a senior level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the White House's own delegates to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the position. "I witnessed, as a baseline," he wrote later "obvious failure, carelessness, and unaccountability: in the worst case, lying, ineptitude, and corruption."
Broader Context
Cheney was not entirely accountable for the Iraq military action. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for similar measures. He had composed a memo setting out situations in which American interests might be threatened (encompassing "obtaining crucial commodities, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "the United States should be prepared to operate alone when joint efforts cannot be arranged," particularly citing defense operations against Iraq.
Bush additionally had assumed the Oval Office vaguely intent on implementing what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. Subsequent to he had been sacked by the president, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his intention of lowering America's participation in the regional tensions and mooted military action against Iraq.
Bush carried a individual resentment against Saddam, convinced he had been behind a scheme to kill his parent, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He also disliked that one of the largest accommodations in Baghdad had a floor mural with a image of his father's visage that each person had to step on.
Interrogation Methods
But it was Cheney who was one of the most outspoken advocating striking Iraq, repeatedly referencing intelligence reports that were either weak or totally inaccurate. He backed what the Bush administration euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation", the employment of waterboarding and harsh treatment.
Addressing a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no valuable data had come from the harsh techniques, Cheney disregarded the conclusions as "full of crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to take steps and establish procedures to catch the bastards who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it was not repeated. That was specifically what they did and they deserve a lot of praise."
Public Image
Cheney enjoyed labels given to him by detractors such as the Star Wars villain and the sinister presence, and by the concept that he was a dark force controlling Bush. In the journalist's 2013 book 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 corner that operates invisibly come out of his lair? It's a effective way to function, truthfully."
Business Interests
Dispute over his commercial relationships pursued him throughout his time as vice-president. Even though he had minimal expertise in corporate affairs but good contacts in defence, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial energy companies, in 1995 as leader and CEO.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's VP candidate for the presidency. Contentiously, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was given US contracts totaling multiple billions.
It made him rich. His yearly earnings during his time at the firm rose from his quarter-million dollars while defence secretary to over four million. When he departed in 2000 he had a compensation package valued at in excess of $20m|twenty
