Former Vice-President Dick Cheney: A Look Back on the Impactful Time in Office

The former US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who died at the age of 84, was seen as among the most powerful incumbents of that position in American history. While countless second-in-commands had to settle for peripheral or ceremonial functions, Cheney held enormous sway during the presidency of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was commonly called as the "real president".

Bush disliked such a characterisation and claimed the connection was more nuanced. He observed that Cheney was respectful, consistently addressing him in public settings as President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush questioned even characterisations of their relationship as a partnership because it indicated that they were peers. Despite these objections, Cheney considered the laidback president pliable on a broad range of governmental choices.

The Aftermath of 9/11

In charge of a group of neo-cons that featured military head Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been taking part in a meeting at a school in Florida. As Bush made his way to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took command, commanding the shooting down of any unidentified aircraft approaching the Capitol building.

Cheney claimed the strikes altered his perspective, causing him to be determined on revenge. In conjunction with other neo-conservatives, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a takeover of Afghanistan in an endeavor to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, even though there was little proof of Saddam Hussein having involvement.

Controversial Decisions

He showed no remorse about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis perished, and not about the enhanced interrogation of suspects apprehended after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was based on faulty intelligence echoed by Cheney, was the right decision. "It proved to be the right thing to do back then. I believed it then and I believe it now."

But even then, there were dissenting voices at a top tier about the poor management of Iraq. One of the administration's own representatives to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the post. "I witnessed, at the very least," he later wrote "obvious failure, negligence, and recklessness: at worst, falsehoods, ineptitude, and graft."

Wider Perspective

Cheney was not completely to blame for the Iraq campaign. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had advocated for similar measures. He had composed a memorandum detailing situations in which national priorities might be compromised (featuring "availability of vital raw materials, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the US should be prepared to take unilateral action when collective action prove impossible," explicitly referencing defense operations against Iraq.

Bush additionally had arrived in the White House vaguely intent on implementing what his parent had notably declined to do in 1991; remove Saddam. After he had been fired by the administration, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his intention of diminishing America's engagement in the regional tensions and suggested armed intervention against Iraq.

Bush bore a personal grudge against Saddam, believing he had been behind a conspiracy to murder his parent, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He also resented that one of the most prominent hotels in Baghdad had a floor mural with a portrait of his father's countenance that each person had to walk over.

Questioning Techniques

But it was Cheney who was part of the most outspoken supporting invading Iraq, frequently referencing information documents that were whether weak or completely deceptive. He endorsed what the Bush White House indirectly described as "advanced techniques", the application of simulated drowning and torture.

Answering a Senate document in 2014 that determined that no useful information had been obtained through the torture, Cheney dismissed the conclusions as "riddled with crap". He stated to Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to take steps and create programmes to capture the bastards who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it never happened again. That's exactly what they did and they deserve a lot of credit."

Public Image

Cheney enjoyed nicknames given to him by opponents such as the Star Wars villain and The Prince of Darkness, and by the concept that he was a dark force manipulating Bush. In the journalist's 2013 volume about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Am I the sinister strategist in the shadows that operates invisibly come out of his hole? That is a nice way to operate, truthfully."

Corporate Connections

Debate over his commercial relationships accompanied him through his period as VP. While he had little experience in business but good contacts in military, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's largest petroleum companies, in 1995 as leader and top executive.

In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's running mate for the White House. Contentiously, during the military campaign, Halliburton was awarded US agreements valued at billions.

It significantly boosted his finances. His annual income during his period at the corporation rose from his quarter-million dollars during his time as military head to $4.4m. When he left in 2000 he had a severance arrangement valued at more than $20m|twenty