One-time VP Dick Cheney: A Look Back on His Powerful Political Career

The deceased US vice-president Dick Cheney, who has died at age 84, was regarded as one of the most significant incumbents of the vice-presidency in American history. Although countless second-in-commands were confined to minor or ceremonial functions, Cheney exercised substantial influence during the term of George W Bush, to the point that he was often described as the "true president".

Bush resented this portrayal and said the connection was more complicated. He noted that Cheney was courteous, invariably calling him in public settings as Mr President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush challenged even portrayals of their partnership as a collaboration because it suggested that they were equals. Regardless of these objections, Cheney found the easygoing president malleable on a whole raft of administrative determinations.

The Period Following the Attacks

In charge of a contingent of neo-conservatives that featured military head Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in response to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been participating in a gathering at a educational institution in Florida. Whereas Bush traveled to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took command, commanding the destruction of any unidentified airplanes approaching the government building.

Cheney claimed the assaults altered his perspective, causing him to be determined on retribution. In conjunction with other neo-cons, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a invasion of Afghanistan in an attempt to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then vigorously pushed for the invasion of Iraq, although there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein playing a role.

Debated Policies

He expressed no regrets about the invasion, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis perished, and not about the waterboarding of detainees apprehended after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was founded on misleading intelligence circulated by Cheney, was the right decision. "It represented the correct action to do then. I believed it then and I maintain that stance today."

Yet even then, there were opposing views at a high level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the White House's own representatives to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the role. "I witnessed, as a baseline," he later wrote "true dereliction, carelessness, and recklessness: in the worst case, falsehoods, ineptitude, and graft."

Broader Context

Cheney was not entirely to blame for the Iraq invasion. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for similar measures. He had drafted a document detailing situations in which American interests might be threatened (encompassing "obtaining crucial commodities, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the United States should be postured to take unilateral action when cooperative measures prove impossible," specifically citing defense operations against Iraq.

Bush too had entered the presidency vaguely intent on implementing what his parent had specifically avoided to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. After he had been fired by the administration, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his plan of reducing America's engagement in the Middle East dispute and suggested military action against Iraq.

Bush bore a personal grudge against Saddam, convinced he had been involved in a scheme to kill his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally disliked that one of the biggest accommodations in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his father's face that everyone had to step on.

Investigation Approaches

But it was Cheney who was part of the most vehement behind invading Iraq, frequently quoting intelligence reports that were either weak or totally inaccurate. He backed what the Bush administration euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation", the application of simulated drowning and torture.

Addressing a Senate analysis in 2014 that found that no actionable intelligence had been obtained through the harsh techniques, Cheney dismissed the conclusions as "riddled with crap". He stated to Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to establish protocols and establish initiatives to catch the perpetrators who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it would not recur. That is precisely what they did and they earn a lot of credit."

Public Persona

Cheney reveled in nicknames imposed on him by critics such as the dark character and The Prince of Darkness, and by the notion that he was a sinister influence manipulating Bush. In the author's 2013 book about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Do I represent the sinister strategist in the shadows that remains unseen come out of his domain? It's a advantageous way to operate, actually."

Business Interests

Dispute over his corporate affiliations followed him throughout his time as VP. Even though he had minimal expertise in corporate affairs but established relationships in defence, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's largest oil and gas corporations, in 1995 as chairman and chief executive.

In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's VP candidate for the presidency. Contentiously, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was granted US deals valued at billions.

It made him rich. His yearly earnings during his tenure at the corporation grew from his quarter-million dollars during his time as military head to millions. When he left in 2000 he had a package worth in excess of $20m|twenty