One-time Second-in-Command Dick Cheney: An Examination on His Impactful Political Career

The former US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at the age of 84, was seen as among the most influential incumbents of the vice-presidency in the nation's history. Although many VPs were confined to marginal or figurehead roles, Cheney wielded huge power during the presidency of George W Bush, to the point that he was frequently referred to as the "true president".

Bush objected to such a characterisation and claimed the connection was more complicated. He pointed out that Cheney was respectful, invariably addressing him in public as the President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush questioned even characterisations of their partnership as a team because it suggested that they were peers. Regardless of these objections, Cheney found the relaxed president pliable on a whole raft of governmental choices.

A Aftermath of 9/11

Leading of a group of neo-conservatives that featured military head Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in response to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been attending a meeting at a elementary school in Florida. Whereas Bush made his way to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, commanding the shooting down of any non-communicating airplanes approaching the Capitol building.

Cheney stated the strikes transformed him, leading him to become determined on retaliation. Along with other conservative figures, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a invasion of Afghanistan in an endeavor to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the invasion of Iraq, although there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein being involved.

Disputed Decisions

He voiced no apologies about the invasion, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis perished, and not about the harsh treatment of individuals captured after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was founded on faulty information echoed by Cheney, was the proper path to take. "It proved to be the proper decision to do then. I believed it back then and I hold that view today."

Yet during that period, there were dissenting voices at a top tier about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the administration's own delegates to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the post. "I observed, as a baseline," he subsequently stated "obvious failure, negligence, and irresponsibility: at worst, lying, ineptitude, and dishonesty."

Additional Factors

Cheney was not solely accountable for the Iraq campaign. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had advocated for comparable steps. He had drafted a memo detailing circumstances in which national priorities might be threatened (encompassing "availability of vital raw materials, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the United States should be postured to operate alone when cooperative measures prove impossible," explicitly referencing defense operations against Iraq.

Bush also had arrived in the presidency generally inclined on implementing what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Following he had been sacked by the administration, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill recounted 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 bore a personal grudge against Saddam, thinking he had been responsible for a scheme to murder his parent, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore disliked that one of the most prominent hotels in Baghdad had a ground design with a likeness of his predecessor's visage that each person had to step on.

Investigation Approaches

Yet it was Cheney who was among the most vociferous supporting attacking Iraq, consistently referencing intelligence reports that were both thin or completely inaccurate. He supported what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the use of interrogation method and physical pressure.

Responding to a Senate report in 2014 that concluded that no actionable intelligence had resulted from the harsh techniques, Cheney disregarded the report as "full of crap". He informed Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to establish protocols and create programmes to capture the individuals who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and ensure it would not recur. That is precisely what they did and they merit a lot of recognition."

Public Persona

Cheney reveled in monikers assigned to him by opponents such as the dark character and The Prince of Darkness, and by the notion that he was a shadow power manipulating Bush. In the journalist'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 remains unseen leave his lair? That is a advantageous way to work, in fact."

Corporate Connections

Debate over his business interests pursued him throughout his time as VP. While he had minimal expertise in business but good contacts in military, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's largest petroleum companies, in 1995 as chair and chief executive.

In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's election partner for the presidency. Controversially, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was granted US agreements valued at substantial sums.

It greatly increased his wealth. His annual income during his time at the corporation rose from his $258,394 during his time as military head to $4.4m. When he departed in 2000 he had a severance arrangement worth in excess of $20m|twenty