The late US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who has died at the age of 84, was considered among the most significant incumbents of that office in American history. Although countless second-in-commands were limited to marginal or symbolic functions, Cheney held huge sway during the administration of George W Bush, to the point that he was often called as the "true president".
Bush objected to that description and stated the connection was more complicated. He observed that Cheney was courteous, invariably calling him in public as Mr President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush disputed even portrayals of their association as a partnership because it indicated that they were on equal footing. Regardless of such protestations, Cheney viewed the relaxed president accommodating on a broad range of policy decisions.
The Aftermath of 9/11
In charge of a contingent of conservative hawks that included military head Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been taking part in a meeting at a elementary school in Florida. While Bush traveled to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took command, directing the shooting down of any non-communicating airplanes heading toward the Capitol building.
Cheney claimed the strikes transformed him, leading him to become intent on retaliation. Along with other conservative figures, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a occupation of Afghanistan in an effort to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the military action of Iraq, even though there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Debated Decisions
He voiced no apologies about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis died, nor about the enhanced interrogation of individuals captured after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was predicated on faulty reports echoed by Cheney, was the right decision. "It represented the proper decision to do at that time. I believed it at the time and I believe it now."
Yet even then, there were dissenting voices at a top tier about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the government's own representatives to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the post. "I observed, at the very least," he wrote later "clear negligence, negligence, and unaccountability: potentially, falsehoods, incompetence, and dishonesty."
Broader Context
Cheney was not entirely responsible for the Iraq military action. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for such action. He had written a memo outlining situations in which US concerns might be compromised (including "access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the United States should be positioned to operate alone when collective action cannot be orchestrated," explicitly referencing military moves against Iraq.
Bush also had arrived in the presidency generally inclined on carrying out what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; topple Saddam. Following he had been dismissed by the administration, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his objective of reducing America's involvement in the regional tensions and proposed armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush bore a personal grudge against Saddam, convinced he had been responsible for a conspiracy to assassinate his father, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He also objected to that one of the most prominent establishments in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his father's countenance that everyone had to tread upon.
Investigation Approaches
Yet it was Cheney who was one of the most outspoken supporting striking Iraq, frequently citing agency briefings that were whether weak or completely deceptive. He endorsed what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation", the application of interrogation method and torture.
Answering a Senate report in 2014 that determined that no valuable data had resulted from the interrogation methods, Cheney dismissed the report as "riddled with crap". He informed Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to take steps and establish programmes to apprehend the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it would not recur. That is precisely what they did and they earn a lot of credit."
External Perception
Cheney enjoyed nicknames assigned to him by detractors such as the Star Wars villain and the sinister presence, and by the idea that he was a shadow power directing Bush. In the journalist's 2013 volume about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Is it me who is the sinister strategist in the background that nobody ever sees emerge from his domain? This represents a advantageous way to function, actually."
Corporate Connections
Debate over his commercial relationships accompanied him during his tenure as second-in-command. Even though he had minimal expertise in business but strong connections in defence, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest energy companies, in 1995 as leader and top executive.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's election partner for the presidency. Debatably, during the military campaign, Halliburton was given US deals totaling billions.
It made him rich. His annual income during his period at the corporation rose from his $258,394 during his time as military head to over four million. When he resigned in 2000 he had a package valued at in excess of $20m|twenty
