The deceased US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was considered one of the most powerful incumbents of that office in US history. Although numerous vice-presidents had to settle for peripheral or ceremonial functions, Cheney exercised huge sway during the administration of George W Bush, so much so that he was often referred to as the "true president".
Bush resented this portrayal and stated the relationship was more nuanced. He noted that Cheney was respectful, always calling him in public settings as Mr President, while he called him as Dick. Bush questioned even portrayals of their relationship as a partnership because it suggested that they were peers. Despite these denials, Cheney viewed the relaxed president accommodating on a wide array of governmental choices.
A Post-9/11 Era
In charge of a group of conservative hawks that featured Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command 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 assault, Bush had been participating in a gathering at a elementary school in Florida. Whereas Bush traveled to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, directing the downing of any unidentified aircraft heading toward the US Capitol.
Cheney said the attacks changed him, causing him to be focused on retribution. In conjunction with other conservative figures, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a invasion of Afghanistan in an attempt to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the military action of Iraq, even though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Debated Policies
He expressed no regrets about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, and not about the enhanced interrogation of suspects captured after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was founded on faulty information circulated by Cheney, was the right course of action. "It represented the proper decision to do back then. I believed it then and I maintain that stance now."
Yet even at the time, there were dissenting voices at a high level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the government's own delegates to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the position. "I witnessed, at a minimum," he wrote later "clear negligence, carelessness, and recklessness: potentially, lying, unfitness, and dishonesty."
Broader Context
Cheney was not completely to blame for the Iraq campaign. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for such action. He had composed a document setting out circumstances in which national priorities might be endangered (featuring "access to essential resources, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the US should be positioned to operate alone when cooperative measures cannot be arranged," explicitly referencing military moves against Iraq.
Bush additionally had assumed the White House generally inclined on implementing what his parent had notably declined to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. After he had been fired by the president, the finance chief Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his intention of diminishing America's involvement in the Middle East dispute and mooted armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush bore a individual resentment against Saddam, thinking he had been responsible for a plot to assassinate his father, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore disliked that one of the biggest hotels in Baghdad had a ground design with a likeness of his predecessor's face that all visitors had to step on.
Investigation Approaches
However it was Cheney who was among the most vehement advocating striking Iraq, repeatedly quoting agency briefings that were either insubstantial or entirely deceptive. He endorsed what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the application of waterboarding and physical pressure.
Answering a Senate document in 2014 that determined that no actionable intelligence had come from the torture, Cheney dismissed the report as "full of crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to take steps and establish procedures to capture the individuals who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it would not recur. That was specifically what they did and they merit a lot of credit."
Public Image
Cheney took pleasure in monikers given to him by opponents such as the Star Wars villain and the dark figure, and by the idea that he was a dark force controlling Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 publication about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Do I represent the malevolent mastermind in the background that operates invisibly come out of his lair? It's a effective way to work, in fact."
Corporate Connections
Debate over his commercial relationships followed him during his tenure as second-in-command. Although he had limited background in commerce but good contacts in military, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial oil and gas corporations, in 1995 as leader and CEO.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's running mate for the executive branch. Debatably, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was given US contracts worth multiple billions.
It significantly boosted his finances. His annual income during his period at the firm increased from his previous salary during his time as military head to $4.4m. When he departed in 2000 he had a package valued at in excess of $20m|twenty
