Former VP Dick Cheney: A Retrospective on His Influential Time in Office

The former US vice-president Dick Cheney, who has died at age 84, was considered one of the most significant occupants of the vice-presidency in the nation's history. Although many VPs were limited to marginal or ceremonial roles, Cheney exercised enormous power during the presidency of George W Bush, to the point that he was commonly referred to as the "real president".

Bush objected to this portrayal and stated the dynamic was more complicated. He noted that Cheney was deferential, invariably addressing him in official appearances as the President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush challenged even characterisations of their relationship as a team because it indicated that they were equals. Despite these objections, Cheney viewed the relaxed president pliable on a wide array of administrative determinations.

The Aftermath of 9/11

At the head of a faction of conservative hawks that featured Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been attending a gathering at a elementary school in Florida. As Bush traveled to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, ordering the downing of any unidentified planes heading toward the Capitol building.

Cheney stated the strikes transformed him, leading him to become determined on retaliation. Together with other neo-cons, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a takeover of Afghanistan in an effort to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the armed intervention of Iraq, although there was little proof of Saddam Hussein playing a role.

Disputed Actions

He voiced no apologies about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis died, or about the enhanced interrogation of detainees rounded up after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was predicated on misleading reports repeated by Cheney, was the right course of action. "It proved to be the proper decision to do then. I believed it back then and I believe it now."

But during that period, there were opposing views at a senior level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the administration's own delegates to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the role. "I witnessed, as a baseline," he later wrote "clear negligence, inaction, and recklessness: at worst, lying, ineptitude, and graft."

Additional Factors

Cheney was not entirely responsible for the Iraq campaign. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had composed a memo setting out situations in which American interests might be compromised (including "access to crucial commodities, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the US should be positioned to operate alone when collective action cannot be arranged," particularly referencing defense operations against Iraq.

Bush additionally had arrived in the presidency generally inclined on implementing what his father had specifically avoided to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Subsequent to he had been dismissed by the administration, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his intention of reducing America's participation in the Middle East dispute and proposed military action against Iraq.

Bush carried a personal grudge against Saddam, believing he had been involved in a plot to murder his parent, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He also disliked that one of the biggest accommodations in Baghdad had a ground design with a likeness of his father's face that each person had to walk over.

Investigation Approaches

Yet it was Cheney who was one of the most vociferous supporting attacking Iraq, consistently citing intelligence reports that were both weak or entirely inaccurate. He endorsed what the Bush government politely called as "intensive questioning", the use of simulated drowning and harsh treatment.

Responding to a Senate report in 2014 that found that no valuable data had come from the torture, Cheney rejected the report as "loaded with crap". He stated to Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to implement measures and create initiatives to apprehend the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and ensure it was not repeated. That was specifically what they did and they merit a lot of credit."

External Perception

Cheney enjoyed monikers given to him by critics such as the dark character and The Prince of Darkness, and by the notion that he was a dark force manipulating 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 evil genius in the corner that remains unseen leave his hole? That is a nice way to work, in fact."

Corporate Connections

Controversy over his business interests accompanied him throughout his time as vice-president. Even though he had limited background in business but good contacts in security, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's biggest energy corporations, in 1995 as chairman and top executive.

In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's running mate for the presidency. Controversially, during the military campaign, Halliburton was granted US agreements totaling billions.

It significantly boosted his finances. His annual income during his time at the firm grew from his previous salary while Pentagon chief to $4.4m. When he left in 2000 he had a severance arrangement totaling more than $20m|twenty