Former Second-in-Command Dick Cheney: A Retrospective on the Influential Time in Office
The deceased US VP Dick Cheney, who has died at the age of 84, was regarded as arguably the most powerful occupants of that office in American history. Whereas numerous VPs were confined to peripheral or symbolic positions, Cheney held enormous influence during the administration of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was frequently called as the "true president".
Bush resented this portrayal and said the connection was more complex. He observed that Cheney was respectful, invariably addressing him in official appearances as the President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush challenged even characterisations of their association as a team because it implied that they were peers. In spite of these objections, Cheney found the laidback president malleable on a whole raft of governmental choices.
The Period Following the Attacks
Leading of a contingent of neo-conservatives that encompassed military head Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been attending a gathering at a elementary school in Florida. While Bush headed for a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, commanding the shooting down of any unresponsive aircraft approaching the government building.
Cheney said the strikes altered his perspective, causing him to be focused on revenge. Along with other conservative figures, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a takeover of Afghanistan in an effort to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the invasion of Iraq, though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein having involvement.
Disputed Policies
He voiced no apologies about the invasion, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis perished, and not about the enhanced interrogation of individuals apprehended after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was based on inaccurate information repeated by Cheney, was the proper decision. "It proved to be the proper decision to do then. I was convinced then and I believe it presently."
Yet even at the time, there were opposing views at a high level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the administration's own representatives to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was dismissed from the position. "I witnessed, at a minimum," he later wrote "obvious failure, carelessness, and recklessness: in the worst case, falsehoods, incompetence, and graft."
Broader Context
Cheney was not completely accountable for the Iraq invasion. Before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for similar measures. He had written a memo outlining scenarios in which US concerns might be compromised (including "access to essential resources, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the US should be prepared to operate alone when collective action cannot be orchestrated," explicitly citing defense operations against Iraq.
Bush additionally had arrived in the White House vaguely intent on implementing what his predecessor had famously refused to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Subsequent to he had been dismissed by the administration, the finance chief Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his intention of reducing America's engagement in the regional tensions and proposed defense operations against Iraq.
Bush bore a private grievance against Saddam, convinced he had been behind a scheme to assassinate his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore disliked that one of the most prominent accommodations in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his predecessor's face that everyone had to step on.
Questioning Techniques
But it was Cheney who was part of the most outspoken behind attacking Iraq, repeatedly quoting agency briefings that were both weak or totally inaccurate. He backed what the Bush government euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation", the employment of waterboarding and harsh treatment.
Responding to a Senate analysis in 2014 that found that no valuable data had been obtained through the harsh techniques, Cheney dismissed the conclusions as "loaded with crap". He stated to Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to establish protocols and establish procedures to apprehend the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and ensure it would not recur. That was specifically what they did and they deserve a lot of praise."
External Perception
Cheney took pleasure in monikers given to him by detractors such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the idea that he was a dark force manipulating Bush. In the author's 2013 volume about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Do I represent the malevolent mastermind in the background that remains unseen come out of his domain? That is a advantageous way to operate, in fact."
Commercial Ties
Dispute over his business interests pursued him during his tenure as second-in-command. Although he had minimal expertise in corporate affairs but established relationships in security, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial oil and gas corporations, in 1995 as chair and CEO.
In 2000 he became Bush's running mate for the presidency. Controversially, during the military campaign, Halliburton was granted US contracts valued at substantial sums.
It made him rich. His yearly earnings during his period at the company increased from his $258,394 during his time as defence secretary to $4.4m. When he resigned in 2000 he had a compensation package worth more than $20m|twenty
