Ex- Vice-President Dick Cheney: A Look Back on His Influential Government Service

The former US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at the age of 84, was regarded as arguably the most significant occupants of that position in US history. While many VPs were limited to minor or figurehead functions, Cheney wielded substantial sway during the term of George W Bush, to the point that he was commonly called as the "actual president".

Bush resented such a characterisation and claimed the relationship was more complex. He noted that Cheney was courteous, invariably addressing him in public as President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush challenged even characterisations of their association as a team because it suggested that they were equals. Despite these objections, Cheney found the relaxed president malleable on a whole raft of administrative determinations.

A Post-9/11 Era

In charge of a faction of neo-cons that included Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been participating in a gathering at a educational institution in Florida. Whereas Bush headed for a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, ordering the downing of any unresponsive airplanes approaching the Capitol building.

Cheney claimed the attacks changed him, making him become focused on retaliation. Along with other conservative figures, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a takeover of Afghanistan in an endeavor to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the invasion of Iraq, though there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein being involved.

Disputed Actions

He voiced no apologies about the invasion, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, or about the waterboarding of suspects captured after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was based on inaccurate reports repeated by Cheney, was the proper decision. "It proved to be the right thing to do back then. I was convinced back then and I believe it now."

Yet during that period, there were dissenting voices at a top tier about the poor management of Iraq. One of the administration's own special envoys to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the position. "I witnessed, at the very least," he later wrote "obvious failure, negligence, and irresponsibility: potentially, deception, ineptitude, and dishonesty."

Wider Perspective

Cheney was not solely accountable for the Iraq military action. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for such action. He had drafted a memo outlining scenarios in which American interests might be threatened (featuring "availability of vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "the United States should be postured to act independently when cooperative measures cannot be orchestrated," specifically citing defense operations against Iraq.

Bush additionally had arrived in the White House somewhat determined on carrying out what his parent had famously refused to do in 1991; topple Saddam. Subsequent to he had been dismissed by the president, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his intention of lowering America's participation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mooted armed intervention against Iraq.

Bush held a personal grudge against Saddam, believing he had been behind a scheme to assassinate his parent, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore objected to that one of the most prominent hotels in Baghdad had a floor mural with a likeness of his parent's visage that each person had to walk over.

Questioning Techniques

However it was Cheney who was one of the most outspoken behind striking Iraq, consistently citing agency briefings that were whether weak or totally inaccurate. He backed what the Bush White House politely called as "intensive questioning", the application of waterboarding and physical pressure.

Answering a Senate report in 2014 that determined that no useful information had come from the interrogation methods, Cheney dismissed the report as "loaded with crap". He stated to Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to establish protocols and create procedures to apprehend the bastards who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it never happened again. That was specifically what they did and they deserve a lot of recognition."

Public Persona

Cheney took pleasure in nicknames assigned to him by critics such as the Star Wars villain and The Prince of Darkness, and by the idea that he was a shadow power manipulating Bush. In the journalist's 2013 volume about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Do I represent the malevolent mastermind in the shadows that operates invisibly come out of his lair? This represents a nice way to function, truthfully."

Business Interests

Debate over his corporate affiliations pursued him through his period as second-in-command. While he had minimal expertise in business but strong connections in defence, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest petroleum conglomerates, in 1995 as chair and chief executive.

In 2000 he became Bush's running mate for the executive branch. Debatably, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was given US contracts valued at billions.

It made him rich. His yearly earnings during his tenure at the corporation increased from his $258,394 when he was Pentagon chief to $4.4m. When he departed in 2000 he had a compensation package worth over $20m|twenty