The deceased US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who has died at age 84, was regarded as one of the most powerful occupants of that office in American history. Whereas countless second-in-commands were limited to peripheral or symbolic functions, Cheney exercised huge power during the administration of George W Bush, so much so that he was often described as the "real president".
Bush disliked this portrayal and said the connection was more complicated. He pointed out that Cheney was respectful, consistently referring to him in public as President, while he called him as Dick. Bush questioned even portrayals of their relationship as a team because it implied that they were equals. In spite of these denials, Cheney considered the relaxed president malleable on a whole raft of governmental choices.
The Post-9/11 Era
At the head of a group of neo-conservatives that included defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been attending a meeting at a school in Florida. Whereas Bush made his way to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, ordering the downing of any unidentified airplanes approaching the Capitol building.
Cheney said the assaults altered his perspective, leading him to become focused on retaliation. 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.
Disputed Decisions
He expressed no regrets about the invasion, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis died, nor about the waterboarding of suspects captured after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was predicated on inaccurate intelligence echoed by Cheney, was the proper decision. "It represented the correct action to do back then. I believed it then and I hold that view now."
However even at the time, there were contrary opinions at a high level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the government's own representatives to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the position. "I observed, at a minimum," he wrote later "obvious failure, carelessness, and unaccountability: at worst, deception, ineptitude, and graft."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not entirely responsible for the Iraq invasion. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for similar measures. He had composed a memo outlining circumstances in which American interests might be compromised (encompassing "availability of vital raw materials, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the United States should be prepared to take unilateral action when joint efforts cannot be arranged," particularly mentioning armed actions against Iraq.
Bush too had assumed the Oval Office vaguely intent on carrying out what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; topple Saddam. After he had been dismissed by the administration, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his plan of lowering America's involvement in the regional tensions and suggested military action against Iraq.
Bush bore a individual resentment against Saddam, believing he had been involved in a plot to murder his father, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore objected to that one of the largest hotels in Baghdad had a ground design with a portrait of his father's visage that all visitors had to tread upon.
Investigation Approaches
Yet it was Cheney who was one of the most vociferous advocating invading Iraq, repeatedly referencing information documents that were whether thin or entirely misleading. He backed what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "advanced techniques", the application of waterboarding and harsh treatment.
Answering a Senate report in 2014 that found that no useful information had come from the harsh techniques, Cheney rejected the conclusions as "riddled with crap". He told Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to take steps and establish programmes to apprehend the perpetrators who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it never happened again. That's exactly what they did and they deserve a lot of credit."
Public Image
Cheney enjoyed labels assigned to him by critics such as the Star Wars villain and The Prince of Darkness, and by the notion that he was a sinister influence manipulating Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 book about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Am I the malevolent mastermind in the background that operates invisibly leave his hole? That is a nice way to function, truthfully."
Business Interests
Controversy over his business interests followed him through his period as VP. Although he had little experience in corporate affairs but good contacts in security, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest oil and gas companies, in 1995 as chairman and top executive.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's VP candidate for the executive branch. Debatably, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was given US deals worth substantial sums.
It significantly boosted his finances. His annual income during his time at the firm grew from his previous salary when he was military head to $4.4m. When he departed in 2000 he had a package worth more than $20m|twenty
