The late US VP Dick Cheney, who has died at the age of 84, was regarded as one of the most influential occupants of that office in US history. While countless second-in-commands were limited to marginal or symbolic roles, Cheney held huge power during the presidency of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was frequently called as the "real president".
Bush disliked that description and claimed the relationship was more complicated. He noted that Cheney was respectful, consistently referring to him in public settings as President, while he called him as Dick. Bush disputed even portrayals of their relationship as a team because it implied that they were equals. In spite of these denials, Cheney found the relaxed president malleable on a wide array of administrative determinations.
The Period Following the Attacks
At the head of a faction of neo-cons that featured Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been participating in a meeting at a school in Florida. Whereas Bush headed for a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, directing the downing of any unresponsive aircraft approaching the US Capitol.
Cheney stated the attacks altered his perspective, making him become determined on retaliation. Along with other neo-cons, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a invasion of Afghanistan in an endeavor to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Disputed Actions
He expressed no regrets about the invasion, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, and not about the enhanced interrogation of individuals rounded up after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was predicated on misleading intelligence repeated by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It proved to be the right thing to do back then. I believed it at the time and I believe it today."
Yet during that period, there were opposing views at a senior level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the government's own representatives to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the role. "I witnessed, at the very least," he later wrote "clear negligence, negligence, and recklessness: potentially, falsehoods, unfitness, and graft."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not completely responsible for the Iraq campaign. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had written a memo outlining scenarios in which national priorities might be endangered (featuring "access to crucial commodities, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "America should be postured to act independently when cooperative measures cannot be orchestrated," explicitly referencing military moves against Iraq.
Bush additionally had arrived in the presidency somewhat determined on executing what his predecessor had notably declined to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Subsequent to he had been fired by the administration, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his plan of lowering America's participation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mooted defense operations against Iraq.
Bush held a personal grudge against Saddam, thinking he had been responsible for a plot to assassinate his parent, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He also resented that one of the most prominent accommodations in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his father's visage that all visitors had to step on.
Investigation Approaches
Yet it was Cheney who was among the most vociferous advocating invading Iraq, frequently referencing intelligence reports that were either insubstantial or completely misleading. He backed what the Bush White House indirectly described as "enhanced interrogation", the application of simulated drowning and physical pressure.
Responding to a Senate report in 2014 that concluded that no valuable data had been obtained through the interrogation methods, Cheney rejected the report as "full of crap". He stated to Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to take steps and establish procedures to capture the individuals who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it never happened again. That is precisely what they did and they deserve a lot of recognition."
Public Persona
Cheney took pleasure in labels imposed on him by critics such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the idea that he was a dark force controlling Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 volume about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Am I the evil genius in the background that remains unseen leave his lair? That is a advantageous way to operate, in fact."
Commercial Ties
Dispute over his commercial relationships accompanied him during his tenure as vice-president. Even though he had little experience in business but good contacts in defence, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial energy corporations, in 1995 as leader and CEO.
In 2000 he became Bush's election partner for the White House. Contentiously, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was awarded US agreements valued at multiple billions.
It significantly boosted his finances. His yearly compensation during his time at the company rose from his quarter-million dollars while military head to millions. When he departed in 2000 he had a severance arrangement totaling over $20m|twenty
