The deceased US VP Dick Cheney, who has died at age 84, was considered one of the most significant holders of that position in the nation's history. While countless second-in-commands were limited to minor or figurehead positions, Cheney wielded enormous influence during the administration of George W Bush, to the point that he was often called as the "real president".
Bush resented this portrayal and stated the connection was more nuanced. He pointed out that Cheney was deferential, consistently referring to him in official appearances as the President, while he called him as Dick. Bush questioned even characterisations of their partnership as a partnership because it implied that they were peers. In spite of such protestations, Cheney viewed the relaxed president malleable on a whole raft of administrative determinations.
A Period Following the Attacks
Leading of a faction of neo-conservatives that included military head Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been participating in a meeting at a elementary school in Florida. As Bush traveled to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, commanding the destruction of any unidentified airplanes nearing the US Capitol.
Cheney said the assaults transformed him, causing him to be determined on retribution. Along with other neo-cons, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a occupation of Afghanistan in an effort to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then vigorously pushed for the military action of Iraq, though there was little proof of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Debated Decisions
He voiced no apologies about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis died, nor about the waterboarding of detainees apprehended after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was founded on inaccurate reports repeated by Cheney, was the right path to take. "It represented the correct action to do back then. I had faith at the time and I maintain that stance today."
However even then, there were contrary opinions at a top tier about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the White House's own representatives to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the position. "I observed, at a minimum," he wrote later "clear negligence, negligence, and recklessness: at worst, deception, unfitness, and graft."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not entirely responsible for the Iraq military action. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had advocated for comparable steps. He had drafted a memorandum outlining circumstances in which US concerns might be threatened (featuring "access to essential resources, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the US should be positioned to take unilateral action when cooperative measures prove impossible," explicitly mentioning defense operations against Iraq.
Bush additionally had arrived in the White House generally inclined on executing what his father had specifically avoided to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. Following he had been sacked 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 stated his plan of lowering America's involvement in the regional tensions and mooted military action against Iraq.
Bush carried a private grievance against Saddam, thinking he had been behind a conspiracy to murder his parent, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He also objected to that one of the largest hotels in Baghdad had a ground design with a portrait of his father's visage that each person had to tread upon.
Interrogation Methods
Yet it was Cheney who was among the most outspoken supporting invading Iraq, consistently referencing intelligence reports that were both insubstantial or entirely inaccurate. He backed what the Bush administration euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the application of waterboarding and physical pressure.
Answering a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no valuable data had come from the torture, Cheney dismissed the report as "full of crap". He told Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to implement measures and put in place programmes to capture the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and ensure it was not repeated. That's exactly what they did and they merit a lot of credit."
Public Persona
Cheney reveled in labels assigned to him by detractors such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the notion that he was a shadow power directing Bush. In the journalist's 2013 book about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Is it me who is the sinister strategist in the corner that remains unseen leave his lair? This represents a nice way to operate, truthfully."
Corporate Connections
Debate over his commercial relationships followed him through his period as VP. Even though he had little experience in corporate affairs but strong connections in security, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial petroleum companies, in 1995 as chair and chief executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's running mate for the White House. Debatably, during the military campaign, Halliburton was granted US deals totaling multiple billions.
It greatly increased his wealth. His annual income during his period at the corporation grew from his $258,394 when he was Pentagon chief to $4.4m. When he resigned in 2000 he had a package worth in excess of $20m|twenty
