The former US vice-president Dick Cheney, who has died at age 84, was considered one of the most powerful holders of that position in American history. Although numerous VPs had to settle for marginal or ceremonial functions, Cheney exercised huge power during the administration of George W Bush, so much so that he was commonly described as the "real president".
Bush disliked that description and said the dynamic was more complicated. He pointed out that Cheney was respectful, invariably addressing him in public settings as the President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush questioned even characterisations of their partnership as a team because it indicated that they were peers. Regardless of such protestations, Cheney considered the easygoing president accommodating on a wide array of administrative determinations.
The Post-9/11 Era
Leading of a contingent of neo-cons that featured defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been participating in a gathering at a school in Florida. As Bush headed for a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, commanding the shooting down of any unidentified aircraft heading toward the US Capitol.
Cheney said the attacks changed him, making him become focused on retaliation. Together with other conservative figures, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a takeover of Afghanistan in an effort to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, even though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Debated Decisions
He voiced no apologies about the armed intervention, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, or about the enhanced interrogation of suspects captured after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was predicated on inaccurate information echoed by Cheney, was the proper course of action. "It represented the right thing to do then. I had faith at the time and I maintain that stance today."
However even at the time, there were dissenting voices at a senior level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the government's own representatives to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the post. "I witnessed, at a minimum," he later wrote "clear negligence, negligence, and unaccountability: in the worst case, lying, unfitness, and graft."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not completely to blame for the Iraq military action. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for similar measures. He had written a memo outlining situations in which US concerns might be threatened (encompassing "access to vital raw materials, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the United States should be positioned to act independently when cooperative measures cannot be arranged," explicitly citing defense operations against Iraq.
Bush too had arrived in the White House somewhat determined on executing what his parent had specifically avoided to do in 1991; remove Saddam. After he had been fired by the administration, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his intention of lowering America's engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and suggested armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush held a personal grudge against Saddam, thinking he had been behind a conspiracy to murder his father, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore disliked that one of the most prominent accommodations in Baghdad had a ground design with a likeness of his father's visage that each person had to walk over.
Investigation Approaches
But it was Cheney who was part of the most vehement supporting attacking Iraq, repeatedly referencing information documents that were either thin or completely deceptive. He backed what the Bush government euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the use of simulated drowning and torture.
Addressing a Senate analysis in 2014 that determined that no actionable intelligence had been obtained through the torture, Cheney rejected the report as "full of crap". He told Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to take steps and put in place procedures to capture the bastards who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it never happened again. That's exactly what they did and they merit a lot of recognition."
Public Persona
Cheney enjoyed monikers assigned to him by critics such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the notion that he was a sinister influence controlling Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 volume about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Do I represent the malevolent mastermind in the corner that remains unseen emerge from his domain? That is a nice way to work, actually."
Business Interests
Controversy over his commercial relationships followed him throughout his time as VP. While he had little experience in business but good contacts in security, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial oil and gas companies, in 1995 as chairman and CEO.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's VP candidate for the executive branch. Controversially, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was awarded US agreements valued at billions.
It made him rich. His yearly earnings during his tenure at the company rose from his $258,394 when he was military head to over four million. When he left in 2000 he had a package valued at in excess of $20m|twenty
