The former US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was seen as arguably the most significant holders of that office in US history. While countless second-in-commands had to settle for marginal or ceremonial functions, Cheney held substantial power during the term of George W Bush, to the point that he was frequently called as the "true president".
Bush disliked that description and claimed the dynamic was more complicated. He observed that Cheney was courteous, always referring to him in public as Mr President, while he called him as Dick. Bush questioned even descriptions of their association as a collaboration because it suggested that they were equals. Despite such protestations, Cheney considered the relaxed president pliable on a wide array of administrative determinations.
The Aftermath of 9/11
At the head of a group of neo-conservatives that encompassed military head Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been attending a meeting at a school in Florida. While Bush headed for a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, ordering the downing of any non-communicating airplanes nearing the US Capitol.
Cheney stated the assaults transformed him, making him become intent on retribution. Along with other neo-cons, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a takeover of Afghanistan in an endeavor to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the military action of Iraq, although there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein being involved.
Controversial Policies
He showed no remorse about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis died, nor about the waterboarding of individuals rounded up after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was predicated on faulty reports echoed by Cheney, was the right path to take. "It proved to be the right thing to do back then. I believed it then and I maintain that stance now."
However even then, there were contrary opinions at a senior level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the administration's own special envoys to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the role. "I observed, at a minimum," he wrote later "obvious failure, inaction, and irresponsibility: at worst, falsehoods, unfitness, and dishonesty."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not solely responsible for the Iraq campaign. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had composed a memo outlining scenarios in which American interests might be compromised (including "access to vital raw materials, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the US should be prepared to take unilateral action when joint efforts cannot be arranged," explicitly citing armed actions against Iraq.
Bush also had arrived in the Oval Office generally inclined on implementing what his parent had notably declined to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. Following he had been sacked by the White House, the Treasury head 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 participation in the regional tensions and proposed armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush bore a personal grudge against Saddam, convinced he had been involved in a plot to assassinate his parent, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He also resented that one of the biggest accommodations in Baghdad had a floor mural with a portrait of his predecessor's visage that each person had to tread upon.
Interrogation Methods
But it was Cheney who was one of the most vehement supporting attacking Iraq, repeatedly citing agency briefings that were either thin or totally deceptive. He backed what the Bush government euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation", the application of simulated drowning and torture.
Addressing a Senate report in 2014 that found that no useful information had resulted from the torture, Cheney disregarded the conclusions as "loaded with crap". He informed Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to implement measures and establish programmes to capture the perpetrators who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it never happened again. That is precisely what they did and they earn a lot of credit."
Public Persona
Cheney took pleasure in nicknames assigned to him by critics such as Darth Vader and The Prince of Darkness, and by the notion that he was a shadow power controlling Bush. In the journalist's 2013 publication about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Is it me who is the sinister strategist in the shadows that operates invisibly emerge from his lair? This represents a nice way to operate, actually."
Commercial Ties
Controversy over his corporate affiliations pursued him during his tenure as VP. While he had minimal expertise in business but established relationships in military, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's biggest petroleum companies, in 1995 as chairman and CEO.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's VP candidate for the executive branch. Contentiously, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was awarded US contracts worth multiple billions.
It significantly boosted his finances. His yearly earnings during his tenure at the firm rose from his $258,394 while Pentagon chief to $4.4m. When he departed in 2000 he had a package valued at more than $20m|twenty
