Former Second-in-Command Dick Cheney: A Look Back on the Impactful Time in Office

The former US vice-president Dick Cheney, who died at age 84, was considered among the most significant occupants of the vice-presidency in American history. While countless second-in-commands had to settle for peripheral or symbolic positions, Cheney wielded substantial influence during the term of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was often described as the "actual president".

Bush objected to that description and said the connection was more complicated. He noted that Cheney was courteous, invariably referring to him in public settings as Mr President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush challenged even portrayals of their relationship as a team because it indicated that they were equals. In spite of such protestations, Cheney found the relaxed president pliable on a wide array of policy decisions.

The Post-9/11 Era

At the head of a faction of neo-cons that included military head Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been taking part in a gathering at a educational institution in Florida. Whereas Bush made his way to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney took command, directing the shooting down of any unidentified airplanes heading toward the Capitol building.

Cheney said the attacks transformed him, causing him to be determined on retribution. In conjunction with other conservative figures, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a occupation of Afghanistan in an endeavor to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the invasion of Iraq, though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein having involvement.

Debated Decisions

He voiced no apologies about the armed intervention, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, or about the enhanced interrogation of suspects rounded up after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was founded on misleading information echoed by Cheney, was the correct decision. "It was the correct action to do back then. I believed it back then and I hold that view today."

Yet even at the time, there were dissenting voices at a top tier about the poor management of Iraq. One of the White House's own delegates to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the position. "I saw, at the very least," he later wrote "clear negligence, negligence, and irresponsibility: potentially, lying, unfitness, and dishonesty."

Broader Context

Cheney was not solely responsible for the Iraq campaign. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had written a memorandum detailing circumstances in which US concerns might be endangered (featuring "availability of crucial commodities, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "America should be prepared to take unilateral action when cooperative measures cannot be orchestrated," specifically citing defense operations against Iraq.

Bush too had arrived in the White House generally inclined on implementing what his parent had specifically avoided to do in 1991; remove Saddam. After he had been dismissed by the White House, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his plan of reducing America's engagement in the Middle East dispute and mooted military action against Iraq.

Bush bore a private grievance against Saddam, convinced he had been behind a scheme to kill his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He also resented that one of the biggest establishments in Baghdad had a floor mural with a likeness of his father's countenance that each person had to walk over.

Questioning Techniques

However it was Cheney who was part of the most vociferous advocating striking Iraq, frequently citing information documents that were either insubstantial or completely deceptive. He endorsed what the Bush government indirectly described as "enhanced interrogation", the employment of waterboarding and harsh treatment.

Responding to a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no valuable data had resulted from the interrogation methods, Cheney rejected the conclusions as "full of crap". He stated to Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to implement measures and put in place procedures to apprehend the bastards 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 praise."

External Perception

Cheney reveled in monikers assigned to him by opponents such as Darth Vader and The Prince of Darkness, and by the notion that he was a shadow power directing Bush. In the journalist's 2013 publication about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Am I the evil genius in the background that nobody ever sees emerge from his hole? It's a nice way to operate, actually."

Corporate Connections

Dispute over his commercial relationships pursued him through his period as vice-president. While he had minimal expertise in commerce but strong connections in defence, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest oil and gas conglomerates, in 1995 as chair and CEO.

In 2000 he became Bush's running mate for the presidency. Controversially, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was given US agreements totaling multiple billions.

It made him rich. His yearly earnings during his tenure at the company increased from his quarter-million dollars while military head to $4.4m. When he resigned in 2000 he had a compensation package valued at more than $20m|twenty