One-time Vice-President Dick Cheney: A Retrospective on His Impactful Government Service

The former US VP Dick Cheney, who died at age 84, was seen as arguably the most influential holders of that office in US history. Although numerous VPs were confined to peripheral or ceremonial positions, Cheney wielded substantial influence during the term of George W Bush, so much so that he was commonly referred to as the "real president".

Bush objected to such a characterisation and said the relationship was more nuanced. He noted that Cheney was courteous, invariably calling him in public as the President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush disputed even portrayals of their partnership as a team because it indicated that they were peers. Regardless of these objections, Cheney found the easygoing president pliable on a whole raft of administrative determinations.

The Post-9/11 Era

At the head of a group of conservative hawks that encompassed Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been participating in a gathering at a school in Florida. While Bush made his way to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, directing the destruction of any non-communicating airplanes approaching the government building.

Cheney stated the strikes altered his perspective, causing him to be intent on revenge. Together with other neo-cons, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a invasion of Afghanistan in an endeavor to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the military action of Iraq, though there was little proof of Saddam Hussein being involved.

Controversial Policies

He showed no remorse about the armed intervention, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, nor about the harsh treatment of individuals rounded up after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was founded on misleading reports echoed by Cheney, was the proper path to take. "It was the proper decision to do then. I believed it back then and I believe it now."

But even then, there were opposing views at a top tier about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the government's own representatives to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the role. "I saw, at the very least," he later wrote "clear negligence, negligence, and unaccountability: in the worst case, falsehoods, unfitness, and corruption."

Broader Context

Cheney was not completely accountable for the Iraq campaign. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for such action. He had drafted a memorandum detailing scenarios in which national priorities might be endangered (featuring "availability of crucial commodities, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "America should be postured to act independently when joint efforts cannot be orchestrated," explicitly citing military moves against Iraq.

Bush additionally had entered the Oval Office generally inclined on implementing what his father had specifically avoided to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. After he had been dismissed by the president, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his intention of diminishing America's participation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and proposed armed intervention against Iraq.

Bush held a individual resentment against Saddam, convinced he had been involved in a conspiracy to murder his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally objected to that one of the most prominent establishments in Baghdad had a floor mural with a likeness of his father's countenance that each person had to tread upon.

Questioning Techniques

Yet it was Cheney who was among the most vehement behind striking Iraq, repeatedly quoting information documents that were both weak or entirely inaccurate. He endorsed what the Bush government indirectly described as "enhanced interrogation", the employment of waterboarding and harsh treatment.

Answering a Senate document in 2014 that found that no valuable data had come from the harsh techniques, Cheney disregarded the report as "full of crap". He told Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to establish protocols and put in place programmes to apprehend the perpetrators who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it would not recur. That's exactly what they did and they earn a lot of credit."

External Perception

Cheney reveled in labels assigned to him by critics such as Darth Vader and The Prince of Darkness, and by the concept that he was a shadow power controlling Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 publication about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Is it me who is the evil genius in the background that nobody ever sees leave his domain? This represents a nice way to operate, actually."

Corporate Connections

Debate over his corporate affiliations pursued him through his period as VP. While he had minimal expertise in commerce but established relationships in defence, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest petroleum conglomerates, in 1995 as chairman and chief executive.

In 2000 he became Bush's election partner for the White House. Contentiously, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was awarded US contracts worth billions.

It made him rich. His yearly earnings during his period at the firm rose from his quarter-million dollars while military head to $4.4m. When he departed in 2000 he had a package worth more than $20m|twenty