One-time Vice-President Dick Cheney: A Retrospective on the Impactful Political Career
The late US vice-president Dick Cheney, who died at the age of 84, was considered among the most powerful holders of that position in American history. While numerous second-in-commands were limited to minor or symbolic functions, Cheney exercised huge sway during the term of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was frequently referred to as the "true president".
Bush disliked this portrayal and stated the connection was more nuanced. He observed that Cheney was respectful, always addressing him in public as Mr President, while he called him as Dick. Bush disputed even descriptions of their association as a collaboration because it suggested that they were on equal footing. Regardless of such protestations, Cheney considered the relaxed president accommodating on a whole raft of policy decisions.
The Period Following the Attacks
Leading of a group of conservative hawks that featured military head Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been attending a meeting at a educational institution in Florida. As Bush headed for a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, ordering the shooting down of any unresponsive planes approaching the US Capitol.
Cheney said the strikes altered his perspective, causing him to be intent on retribution. Together with other neo-cons, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a invasion of Afghanistan in an endeavor to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then vigorously pushed for the invasion of Iraq, although there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Debated Actions
He expressed no regrets about the invasion, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis died, or about the waterboarding of detainees rounded up after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was predicated on inaccurate reports echoed by Cheney, was the correct decision. "It proved to be the proper decision to do at that time. I believed it back then and I hold that view today."
However even at the time, there were opposing views at a senior level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the government's own special envoys to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the post. "I witnessed, at the very least," he subsequently stated "obvious failure, negligence, and recklessness: in the worst case, lying, incompetence, and graft."
Broader Context
Cheney was not completely to blame for the Iraq campaign. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for such action. He had drafted a memorandum outlining circumstances in which national priorities might be threatened (including "availability of essential resources, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the United States should be positioned to operate alone when joint efforts cannot be orchestrated," particularly citing defense operations against Iraq.
Bush too had entered the presidency vaguely intent on executing what his predecessor had famously refused to do in 1991; topple Saddam. Subsequent to he had been sacked by the president, the finance chief Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his objective of lowering America's involvement in the Middle East dispute and proposed military action against Iraq.
Bush carried a private grievance against Saddam, thinking he had been responsible for a conspiracy to murder his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore objected to that one of the biggest accommodations in Baghdad had a ground design with a image of his father's face that all visitors had to tread upon.
Questioning Techniques
Yet it was Cheney who was one of the most vociferous behind attacking Iraq, consistently referencing information documents that were both thin or totally inaccurate. He supported what the Bush White House indirectly described as "enhanced interrogation", the use of simulated drowning and harsh treatment.
Answering a Senate document in 2014 that determined that no actionable intelligence had been obtained through the interrogation methods, Cheney dismissed the findings as "riddled with crap". He told Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to establish protocols and create procedures to capture the individuals who murdered 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 praise."
External Perception
Cheney enjoyed monikers assigned to him by detractors such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the notion that he was a dark force controlling Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 volume about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Am I the evil genius in the shadows that nobody ever sees leave his hole? It's a nice way to operate, in fact."
Corporate Connections
Dispute over his business interests accompanied him throughout his time as VP. While he had minimal expertise in corporate affairs but strong connections in defence, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial energy corporations, in 1995 as leader and CEO.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's VP candidate for the presidency. Contentiously, during the military campaign, Halliburton was given US deals worth substantial sums.
It made him rich. His yearly compensation during his period at the corporation increased from his quarter-million dollars when he was military head to over four million. When he departed in 2000 he had a severance arrangement worth more than $20m|twenty
