The deceased US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who died at the age of 84, was seen as among the most influential incumbents of that office in the nation's history. Although countless second-in-commands had to settle for minor or ceremonial functions, Cheney exercised substantial influence during the administration of George W Bush, to the point that he was often called as the "actual president".
Bush disliked that description and stated the connection was more complex. He pointed out that Cheney was respectful, consistently addressing him in official appearances as President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush challenged even characterisations of their relationship as a partnership because it indicated that they were on equal footing. In spite of these objections, Cheney considered the easygoing president malleable on a wide array of policy decisions.
A Post-9/11 Era
Leading of a contingent of conservative hawks that encompassed 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 terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been attending a gathering at a school in Florida. While Bush traveled to a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, ordering the shooting down of any non-communicating planes nearing the US Capitol.
Cheney claimed the strikes transformed him, making him become focused on retaliation. Along with other neo-conservatives, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a takeover of Afghanistan in an effort to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, although there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Disputed Decisions
He expressed no regrets about the armed intervention, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, and not about the harsh treatment of individuals captured after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was predicated on faulty reports circulated by Cheney, was the proper decision. "It was the proper decision to do back then. I was convinced then and I hold that view presently."
Yet during that period, there were dissenting voices at a senior level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the government's own special envoys to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the post. "I observed, at the very least," he later wrote "obvious failure, negligence, and unaccountability: potentially, deception, unfitness, and corruption."
Additional Factors
Cheney was not entirely accountable for the Iraq campaign. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had advocated for similar measures. He had composed a memo setting out circumstances in which American interests might be compromised (featuring "availability of essential resources, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "America should be postured to operate alone when collective action cannot be arranged," explicitly referencing military moves against Iraq.
Bush also had entered the presidency vaguely intent on carrying out what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. After he had been fired by the White House, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his objective of lowering America's engagement in the regional tensions and mooted military action against Iraq.
Bush held a private grievance against Saddam, thinking he had been responsible for a conspiracy to murder his father, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore objected to that one of the most prominent accommodations in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a portrait of his predecessor's visage that all visitors had to step on.
Interrogation Methods
Yet it was Cheney who was part of the most outspoken supporting striking Iraq, consistently referencing agency briefings that were both insubstantial or completely misleading. He backed what the Bush administration politely called as "enhanced interrogation", the employment of waterboarding and harsh treatment.
Addressing a Senate analysis in 2014 that determined that no useful information had resulted from the torture, Cheney rejected the findings as "full of crap". He stated to Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to establish protocols and put in place programmes to catch the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it never happened again. That was specifically what they did and they deserve a lot of praise."
External Perception
Cheney reveled in monikers assigned to him by critics such as the Star Wars villain and the dark figure, and by the notion that he was a shadow power directing Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 publication about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Is it me who is the malevolent mastermind in the shadows that nobody ever sees leave his lair? It's a nice way to function, actually."
Corporate Connections
Controversy over his business interests accompanied him throughout his time as second-in-command. While he had little experience in commerce but good contacts in military, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's largest oil and gas corporations, in 1995 as chair and chief executive.
In 2000 he became Bush's VP candidate for the presidency. Debatably, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was granted US contracts valued at multiple billions.
It made him rich. His yearly compensation during his period at the firm increased from his $258,394 when he was Pentagon chief to millions. When he resigned in 2000 he had a package totaling more than $20m|twenty
