One-time Second-in-Command Dick Cheney: A Look Back on the Powerful Political Career

The deceased US vice-president Dick Cheney, who passed away at the age of 84, was regarded as arguably the most influential incumbents of that position in the nation's history. While many VPs had to settle for peripheral or ceremonial functions, Cheney exercised enormous influence during the term of George W Bush, so much so that he was frequently called as the "true president".

Bush resented that description and said the connection was more nuanced. He pointed out that Cheney was deferential, always calling him in public as the President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush challenged even descriptions of their relationship as a partnership because it indicated that they were equals. In spite of such protestations, Cheney found the relaxed president pliable on a whole raft of policy decisions.

The Post-9/11 Era

In charge of a group of conservative hawks that included Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been taking part in a meeting at a educational institution in Florida. Whereas Bush traveled to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, directing the shooting down of any non-communicating airplanes nearing the Capitol building.

Cheney said the strikes altered his perspective, causing him to be focused on retribution. In conjunction with other neo-cons, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a occupation of Afghanistan in an attempt to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then vigorously pushed for the military action of Iraq, though there was little proof of Saddam Hussein having involvement.

Controversial Actions

He showed no remorse about the military campaign, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis perished, and not about the harsh treatment of detainees captured after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was founded on inaccurate reports circulated by Cheney, was the right decision. "It was the proper decision to do back then. I believed it at the time and I hold that view now."

However even then, there were contrary opinions at a senior level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the government's own representatives to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the role. "I saw, as a baseline," he wrote later "clear negligence, carelessness, and irresponsibility: in the worst case, lying, incompetence, and corruption."

Broader Context

Cheney was not solely to blame for the Iraq invasion. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for similar measures. He had drafted a memo setting out circumstances in which national priorities might be compromised (including "availability of vital raw materials, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the United States should be postured to act independently when joint efforts prove impossible," explicitly citing defense operations against Iraq.

Bush also had arrived in the Oval Office generally inclined on carrying out what his father had specifically avoided to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. After he had been dismissed by the president, the finance chief Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his objective of lowering America's involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mooted armed intervention against Iraq.

Bush bore 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 also objected to that one of the biggest hotels in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a portrait of his predecessor's countenance that everyone had to step on.

Interrogation Methods

However it was Cheney who was one of the most vehement behind attacking Iraq, consistently quoting information documents that were both thin or totally inaccurate. He backed what the Bush administration euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation", the employment of waterboarding and harsh treatment.

Answering a Senate report in 2014 that found that no useful information had resulted from the interrogation methods, Cheney rejected the report as "full of crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to take steps and establish programmes to catch the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it was not repeated. That is precisely what they did and they merit a lot of credit."

External Perception

Cheney enjoyed monikers assigned to him by detractors such as Darth Vader and the dark figure, and by the notion that he was a dark force controlling Bush. In the author's 2013 publication about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Is it me who is the sinister strategist in the background that remains unseen leave his lair? It's a effective way to operate, actually."

Corporate Connections

Controversy over his commercial relationships pursued him through his period as second-in-command. Even though he had minimal expertise in business but established relationships in military, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial oil and gas conglomerates, in 1995 as chairman and top executive.

In 2000 he became Bush's running mate for the presidency. Contentiously, during the military campaign, Halliburton was given US deals worth substantial sums.

It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly earnings during his period at the corporation grew from his previous salary when he was military head to millions. When he left in 2000 he had a severance arrangement worth over $20m|twenty