Former Vice-President Dick Cheney: A Retrospective on the Powerful Government Service

The late US vice-president Dick Cheney, who has died at age 84, was regarded as among the most powerful holders of the vice-presidency in the nation's history. Although many VPs were confined to minor or figurehead positions, Cheney wielded enormous sway during the term of George W Bush, to the point that he was commonly referred to as the "true president".

Bush disliked such a characterisation and claimed the dynamic was more complex. He pointed out that Cheney was deferential, consistently referring to him in official appearances as President, while he called him as Dick. Bush challenged even characterisations of their relationship as a team because it indicated that they were equals. Regardless of such protestations, Cheney viewed the relaxed president malleable on a wide array of administrative determinations.

A Aftermath of 9/11

At the head of a group of conservative hawks that included military head Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the military intervention of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been attending a session at a school in Florida. Whereas Bush traveled to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, commanding the shooting down of any non-communicating airplanes approaching the government building.

Cheney stated the assaults altered his perspective, causing him to be intent on retaliation. Together with other neo-conservatives, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a takeover of Afghanistan in an effort to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the military action of Iraq, though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein having involvement.

Controversial Policies

He expressed no regrets about the military campaign, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis perished, or about the waterboarding of detainees apprehended after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was based on faulty intelligence echoed by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It proved to be the proper decision to do then. I was convinced then and I believe it presently."

But 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 representatives to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the role. "I observed, as a baseline," he later wrote "true dereliction, negligence, and unaccountability: potentially, lying, unfitness, and graft."

Wider Perspective

Cheney was not completely to blame for the Iraq invasion. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for similar measures. He had written a memorandum setting out circumstances in which US concerns might be threatened (including "availability of vital raw materials, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "the US should be positioned to operate alone when cooperative measures cannot be arranged," explicitly citing defense operations against Iraq.

Bush additionally had assumed the White House somewhat determined on implementing what his predecessor had famously refused to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. Following he had been dismissed 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 announced his plan of lowering America's participation in the Middle East dispute and suggested military action against Iraq.

Bush held a private grievance against Saddam, convinced he had been involved in a plot to assassinate his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He also resented that one of the most prominent accommodations in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his parent's visage that everyone had to step on.

Investigation Approaches

But it was Cheney who was one of the most vociferous advocating attacking Iraq, consistently citing information documents that were whether weak or completely misleading. He endorsed what the Bush White House euphemistically referred to as "advanced techniques", the application of waterboarding and harsh treatment.

Addressing a Senate document in 2014 that concluded that no valuable data had been obtained through the harsh techniques, Cheney disregarded the findings as "riddled with crap". He stated to Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to take steps and establish initiatives to apprehend the perpetrators who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it would not recur. That was specifically what they did and they earn a lot of credit."

Public Persona

Cheney reveled in labels imposed on him by critics such as Darth Vader and the sinister presence, and by the concept that he was a shadow power controlling 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: "Is it me who is the sinister strategist in the corner that nobody ever sees leave his lair? That is a nice way to operate, in fact."

Corporate Connections

Controversy over his commercial relationships accompanied him during his tenure as second-in-command. While he had minimal expertise in corporate affairs but strong connections in defence, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's biggest oil and gas corporations, in 1995 as chair and chief executive.

In 2000 he was selected as Bush's running mate for the presidency. Contentiously, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was granted US contracts worth billions.

It made him rich. His yearly compensation during his tenure at the firm grew from his previous salary when he was Pentagon chief to $4.4m. When he departed in 2000 he had a package valued at over $20m|twenty