Ex- Vice-President Dick Cheney: A Retrospective on His Powerful Time in Office

The late US VP Dick Cheney, who has died at the age of 84, was regarded as among the most significant occupants of the vice-presidency in the nation's history. While many vice-presidents were confined to peripheral or figurehead functions, Cheney exercised enormous power during the term of George W Bush, so much so that he was often referred to as the "real president".

Bush disliked that description and stated the connection was more complicated. He observed that Cheney was respectful, always referring to him in public as Mr President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush questioned even characterisations of their partnership as a team because it indicated that they were equals. In spite of such protestations, Cheney considered the relaxed president pliable on a broad range of administrative determinations.

The Post-9/11 Era

At the head of a group of neo-conservatives that encompassed Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary 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. At the time of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been taking part in a gathering at a educational institution in Florida. While Bush headed for a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney took command, directing the shooting down of any unresponsive aircraft heading toward the Capitol building.

Cheney stated the attacks altered his perspective, leading him to become determined on retribution. Together with other neo-conservatives, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a takeover of Afghanistan in an endeavor to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the invasion of Iraq, even though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein being involved.

Disputed Actions

He voiced no apologies about the invasion, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, and not about the waterboarding of suspects apprehended after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was predicated on misleading intelligence repeated by Cheney, was the proper course of action. "It represented the right thing to do then. I believed it then and I believe it today."

Yet even at the time, there were opposing views at a top tier about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the White House's own delegates to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the post. "I saw, at a minimum," he subsequently stated "true dereliction, negligence, and unaccountability: at worst, deception, ineptitude, and graft."

Additional Factors

Cheney was not solely accountable for the Iraq invasion. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had advocated for such action. He had written a memorandum detailing scenarios in which American interests might be threatened (encompassing "obtaining crucial commodities, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the US should be prepared to take unilateral action when cooperative measures prove impossible," explicitly mentioning armed actions against Iraq.

Bush additionally had entered the Oval Office generally inclined on executing what his father had notably declined to do in 1991; topple Saddam. Subsequent to he had been fired by the White House, the finance chief Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his objective of reducing America's engagement in the regional tensions and mooted defense operations against Iraq.

Bush held a individual resentment against Saddam, thinking he had been responsible for a plot to assassinate his parent, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He also disliked that one of the biggest hotels in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his parent's countenance that each person had to walk over.

Questioning Techniques

But it was Cheney who was one of the most outspoken advocating invading Iraq, frequently referencing information documents that were both insubstantial or entirely deceptive. He backed what the Bush White House indirectly described as "advanced techniques", the application of simulated drowning and torture.

Answering a Senate analysis in 2014 that determined that no actionable intelligence had come from the harsh techniques, Cheney rejected the report as "full of crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to implement measures and establish programmes to apprehend the perpetrators who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it would not recur. That was specifically what they did and they deserve a lot of recognition."

Public Persona

Cheney enjoyed labels assigned to him by critics such as the Star Wars villain and The Prince of Darkness, and by the concept that he was a sinister influence manipulating Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 publication about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Am I the sinister strategist in the shadows that nobody ever sees emerge from his lair? It's a advantageous way to work, truthfully."

Business Interests

Debate over his commercial relationships pursued him throughout his time as vice-president. Even though he had minimal expertise in commerce but established relationships in defence, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest petroleum corporations, in 1995 as leader and chief executive.

In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's election partner for the White House. Debatably, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was awarded US agreements totaling multiple billions.

It made him rich. His annual income during his period at the corporation rose from his quarter-million dollars during his time as Pentagon chief to over four million. When he left in 2000 he had a severance arrangement worth in excess of $20m|twenty