Former Vice-President Dick Cheney: A Retrospective on the Influential Political Career

The deceased US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was seen as arguably the most powerful occupants of the vice-presidency in the nation's history. While countless vice-presidents were confined to marginal or figurehead functions, Cheney exercised enormous sway during the term of George W Bush, to the point that he was commonly called as the "real president".

Bush resented that description and claimed the connection was more nuanced. He pointed out that Cheney was courteous, consistently calling him in public as Mr President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush questioned even characterisations of their relationship as a team because it implied that they were on equal footing. In spite of these objections, Cheney viewed the relaxed president malleable on a whole raft of administrative determinations.

The Post-9/11 Era

At the head of a group of neo-cons that featured defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been participating in a meeting at a elementary school in Florida. As Bush headed for a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, directing the destruction of any unidentified airplanes approaching the Capitol building.

Cheney claimed the strikes transformed him, making him become determined on retaliation. Along with other neo-cons, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a takeover of Afghanistan in an effort to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, though there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein having involvement.

Disputed Actions

He expressed no regrets about the military campaign, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis died, nor about the enhanced interrogation of individuals apprehended after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was based on faulty intelligence repeated by Cheney, was the proper decision. "It represented the correct action to do then. I had faith back then and I hold that view today."

Yet during that period, there were opposing views at a high level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the government's own delegates to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the role. "I witnessed, at a minimum," he subsequently stated "true dereliction, inaction, and unaccountability: in the worst case, lying, incompetence, and dishonesty."

Broader Context

Cheney was not completely to blame for the Iraq campaign. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for similar measures. He had composed a memo outlining scenarios in which US concerns might be compromised (encompassing "access to essential resources, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the US should be positioned to take unilateral action when cooperative measures cannot be orchestrated," specifically citing military moves against Iraq.

Bush also had entered the presidency generally inclined on executing what his father had notably declined to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. Following he had been fired by the administration, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his plan of lowering America's involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mooted defense operations against Iraq.

Bush carried a individual resentment against Saddam, convinced he had been behind a plot to kill his parent, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He also disliked that one of the most prominent hotels in Baghdad had a floor mural with a likeness of his father's visage that everyone had to walk over.

Questioning Techniques

But it was Cheney who was part of the most vociferous advocating attacking Iraq, consistently quoting agency briefings that were either insubstantial or entirely inaccurate. He backed what the Bush White House politely called as "intensive questioning", the application of waterboarding and physical pressure.

Answering a Senate document in 2014 that determined that no actionable intelligence had come from the interrogation methods, Cheney disregarded the conclusions as "full of crap". He stated to Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to establish protocols and create procedures to apprehend the perpetrators who killed 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 credit."

External Perception

Cheney enjoyed nicknames imposed on him by detractors such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the idea that he was a shadow power directing Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 book about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Is it me who is the evil genius in the corner that operates invisibly emerge from his hole? That is a nice way to operate, actually."

Corporate Connections

Controversy over his corporate affiliations followed him during his tenure as vice-president. Although he had little experience in corporate affairs but established relationships in security, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest energy conglomerates, in 1995 as chair and CEO.

In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's election partner for the executive branch. Debatably, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was given US contracts totaling multiple billions.

It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly compensation during his period at the firm grew from his $258,394 during his time as Pentagon chief to over four million. When he resigned in 2000 he had a package totaling over $20m|twenty