One-time Second-in-Command Dick Cheney: A Look Back on the Impactful Government Service

The late US vice-president Dick Cheney, who died at the age of 84, was considered among the most influential incumbents of that office in the nation's history. Although numerous vice-presidents were limited to minor or figurehead roles, Cheney exercised enormous power during the term of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was frequently described as the "true president".

Bush disliked such a characterisation and claimed the connection was more nuanced. He noted that Cheney was deferential, always referring to him in public as Mr President, while he called him as Dick. Bush challenged even portrayals of their partnership as a collaboration because it implied that they were peers. Despite such protestations, Cheney found the laidback president accommodating on a wide array of policy decisions.

The Period Following the Attacks

In charge of a group of neo-conservatives that featured defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been participating in a session at a educational institution in Florida. Whereas Bush made his way to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, commanding the destruction of any unresponsive airplanes approaching the government building.

Cheney stated the attacks changed him, leading him to become focused on retaliation. Together with other neo-cons, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a takeover of Afghanistan in an effort to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then vigorously pushed for the military action of Iraq, even though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein having involvement.

Disputed Decisions

He showed no remorse about the invasion, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis perished, nor about the enhanced interrogation of suspects apprehended after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was based on faulty intelligence circulated by Cheney, was the proper course of action. "It proved to be the proper decision to do at that time. I was convinced at the time and I hold that view today."

But even then, there were opposing views at a high level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the administration's own delegates to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the post. "I saw, as a baseline," he wrote later "true dereliction, carelessness, and unaccountability: in the worst case, deception, incompetence, and graft."

Additional Factors

Cheney was not completely to blame for the Iraq invasion. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had advocated for comparable steps. He had composed a memo outlining situations in which American interests might be endangered (featuring "availability of vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the United States should be postured to act independently when joint efforts cannot be orchestrated," explicitly referencing military moves against Iraq.

Bush also had arrived in the White House generally inclined on executing what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; topple Saddam. Following he had been fired by the administration, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his plan of reducing America's participation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and suggested armed intervention against Iraq.

Bush carried a private grievance against Saddam, thinking he had been behind a scheme to assassinate his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He also disliked that one of the biggest hotels in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a portrait of his parent's visage that each person had to walk over.

Questioning Techniques

Yet it was Cheney who was one of the most vehement advocating invading Iraq, frequently quoting agency briefings that were either insubstantial or totally deceptive. He endorsed what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "intensive questioning", the employment of interrogation method and physical pressure.

Addressing a Senate analysis in 2014 that found that no valuable data had resulted from the interrogation methods, Cheney disregarded the findings as "loaded with crap". He informed Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to take steps and establish programmes to capture the individuals who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it was not repeated. That was specifically what they did and they deserve a lot of praise."

Public Persona

Cheney enjoyed labels imposed on him by detractors such as Darth Vader and the sinister presence, and by the idea that he was a dark force directing Bush. In the author's 2013 volume 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? This represents a effective way to work, truthfully."

Corporate Connections

Controversy over his commercial relationships pursued him through his period as VP. While he had little experience in commerce but good contacts in security, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest oil and gas companies, in 1995 as chair and chief executive.

In 2000 he was selected as Bush's election partner for the executive branch. Contentiously, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was granted US deals worth substantial sums.

It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly compensation during his tenure at the corporation grew from his quarter-million dollars when he was defence secretary to $4.4m. When he left in 2000 he had a compensation package totaling more than $20m|twenty