Ex- VP Dick Cheney: A Look Back on the Influential Government Service

The former US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was considered arguably the most influential occupants of that position in US history. Whereas countless vice-presidents had to settle for minor or figurehead roles, Cheney exercised huge sway 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 connection was more complicated. He noted that Cheney was deferential, always calling him in public as President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush disputed even descriptions of their association as a team because it indicated that they were equals. Regardless of these denials, Cheney found the laidback president accommodating on a whole raft of policy decisions.

The Aftermath of 9/11

Leading of a group of conservative hawks that encompassed military head Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been taking part in a gathering at a school in Florida. As Bush traveled to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, directing the destruction of any unresponsive airplanes approaching the Capitol building.

Cheney claimed the strikes altered his perspective, making him become focused on retribution. In conjunction with other neo-conservatives, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a invasion of Afghanistan in an effort to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein playing a role.

Controversial Policies

He expressed no regrets about the armed intervention, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis perished, nor about the enhanced interrogation of detainees captured after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was founded on misleading reports echoed by Cheney, was the right course of action. "It represented the correct action to do at that time. I had faith back then and I maintain that stance presently."

But even then, there were dissenting voices at a top tier about the poor management of Iraq. One of the administration's own representatives to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the role. "I saw, at a minimum," he later wrote "true dereliction, carelessness, and unaccountability: potentially, lying, unfitness, and dishonesty."

Additional Factors

Cheney was not completely responsible for the Iraq campaign. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for such action. He had drafted a document outlining circumstances in which American interests might be threatened (encompassing "obtaining essential resources, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "America should be prepared to take unilateral action when collective action cannot be arranged," explicitly referencing military moves against Iraq.

Bush too had entered the White House vaguely intent on implementing what his predecessor had notably declined to do in 1991; topple Saddam. After he had been dismissed by the administration, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his objective of diminishing America's engagement in the Middle East dispute and mooted defense operations against Iraq.

Bush carried a private grievance against Saddam, convinced he had been responsible for a plot to kill his father, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore resented that one of the biggest accommodations in Baghdad had a ground design with a image of his father's countenance that everyone had to tread upon.

Questioning Techniques

Yet it was Cheney who was part of the most outspoken supporting invading Iraq, frequently citing information documents that were whether thin or completely inaccurate. He endorsed what the Bush government indirectly described as "intensive questioning", the application of waterboarding and harsh treatment.

Addressing a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no useful information had come from the torture, Cheney disregarded the conclusions as "full of crap". He informed Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to implement measures and create procedures to apprehend the bastards who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it never happened again. That's exactly what they did and they merit a lot of credit."

Public Persona

Cheney reveled in nicknames given to him by detractors such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the notion that he was a shadow power directing Bush. In the journalist's 2013 book about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Do I represent the sinister strategist in the background that operates invisibly emerge from his domain? That is a nice way to work, actually."

Commercial Ties

Dispute over his corporate affiliations pursued him throughout his time as second-in-command. Even though he had limited background in corporate affairs but established relationships in security, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's biggest oil and gas corporations, in 1995 as chairman and CEO.

In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's election partner for the White House. Debatably, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was given US agreements totaling substantial sums.

It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly earnings during his period at the firm grew from his quarter-million dollars while Pentagon chief to millions. When he departed in 2000 he had a severance arrangement totaling over $20m|twenty