Former VP Dick Cheney: A Look Back on His Influential Government Service

The deceased US VP Dick Cheney, who died at age 84, was regarded as among the most powerful occupants of the vice-presidency in US history. While many VPs were confined to minor or ceremonial positions, Cheney held enormous influence during the administration of George W Bush, so much so that he was often referred to as the "real president".

Bush resented this portrayal and claimed the dynamic was more complex. He observed that Cheney was deferential, always calling him in public as President, while he called him as Dick. Bush questioned even descriptions of their relationship as a collaboration because it implied that they were peers. In spite of these objections, Cheney viewed the easygoing president malleable on a broad range of administrative determinations.

The Period Following the Attacks

In charge of a faction of neo-conservatives that featured Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 assault, 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 destruction of any unidentified airplanes nearing the Capitol building.

Cheney stated the attacks altered his perspective, leading him to become intent on revenge. Along with other neo-conservatives, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a invasion of Afghanistan in an endeavor to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then vigorously pushed for the military action of Iraq, even though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein playing a role.

Controversial Actions

He voiced no apologies about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis perished, nor about the enhanced interrogation of individuals apprehended after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was predicated on faulty reports echoed by Cheney, was the proper path to take. "It proved to be the correct action to do then. I believed it at the time and I hold that view now."

Yet during that period, there were contrary opinions at a senior level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the government's own special envoys to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the role. "I saw, at a minimum," he subsequently stated "obvious failure, inaction, and recklessness: at worst, deception, incompetence, and graft."

Additional Factors

Cheney was not solely accountable for the Iraq invasion. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for such action. He had composed a document outlining circumstances in which national priorities might be threatened (featuring "access to essential resources, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the US should be prepared to act independently when cooperative measures cannot be arranged," particularly mentioning armed actions against Iraq.

Bush additionally had arrived in the presidency generally inclined on implementing what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. Following he had been dismissed by the president, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his plan of diminishing America's participation in the Middle East dispute and mooted armed intervention against Iraq.

Bush bore a personal grudge against Saddam, convinced he had been responsible for a conspiracy to murder his father, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He also resented that one of the most prominent accommodations in Baghdad had a floor mural with a likeness of his parent's face that all visitors had to step on.

Interrogation Methods

Yet it was Cheney who was among the most vehement advocating invading Iraq, repeatedly citing agency briefings that were whether insubstantial or completely misleading. He endorsed what the Bush administration euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the employment of interrogation method and physical pressure.

Addressing a Senate analysis in 2014 that determined that no valuable data had been obtained through the harsh techniques, Cheney disregarded the report as "riddled with crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to take steps and create initiatives to apprehend the individuals 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 recognition."

Public Image

Cheney took pleasure in nicknames given to him by detractors such as Darth Vader and the sinister presence, and by the idea that he was a shadow power manipulating Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 volume about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Do I represent the evil genius in the corner that remains unseen come out of his lair? It's a advantageous way to function, truthfully."

Commercial Ties

Debate over his corporate affiliations accompanied him through his period as VP. Even though he had limited background in business but good contacts in military, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's biggest petroleum companies, in 1995 as chair and chief executive.

In 2000 he was selected as Bush's VP candidate for the White House. Contentiously, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was granted US contracts valued at multiple billions.

It significantly boosted his finances. His yearly earnings during his time at the corporation grew from his previous salary when he was Pentagon chief to over four million. When he departed in 2000 he had a package totaling more than $20m|twenty