Former VP Dick Cheney: An Examination on His Impactful Government Service

The former US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who died at the age of 84, was considered among the most influential holders of the vice-presidency in US history. While many VPs had to settle for peripheral or symbolic roles, Cheney held huge influence during the term of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was commonly described as the "actual president".

Bush objected to that description and said the connection was more nuanced. He observed that Cheney was deferential, consistently referring to him in public as Mr President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush disputed even descriptions of their partnership as a collaboration because it indicated that they were peers. Despite these objections, Cheney viewed the relaxed president malleable on a whole raft of policy decisions.

The Period Following the Attacks

At the head of a contingent of neo-cons that encompassed military head Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been participating in a meeting at a school in Florida. As Bush traveled to a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, directing the shooting down of any unidentified aircraft nearing the US Capitol.

Cheney claimed the attacks transformed him, causing him to be focused on retaliation. In conjunction with other conservative figures, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a occupation of Afghanistan in an endeavor to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the invasion of Iraq, although there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein having involvement.

Controversial Actions

He expressed no regrets about the armed intervention, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis died, and not about the waterboarding of detainees captured after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was founded on misleading information echoed by Cheney, was the right decision. "It represented the correct action to do at that time. I had faith back then and I maintain that stance today."

Yet even then, there were opposing views at a top tier about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the administration's own representatives to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the position. "I observed, at a minimum," he wrote later "true dereliction, inaction, and unaccountability: at worst, lying, ineptitude, and corruption."

Broader Context

Cheney was not solely accountable for the Iraq invasion. Prior to 9/11, Wolfowitz had advocated for such action. He had drafted a memorandum setting out circumstances in which American interests might be endangered (encompassing "obtaining vital raw materials, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the United States should be positioned to operate alone when collective action cannot be orchestrated," particularly citing armed actions against Iraq.

Bush additionally had assumed the Oval Office somewhat determined on implementing what his parent had notably declined to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. Subsequent to he had been sacked 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 declared his plan of lowering America's engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and suggested defense operations against Iraq.

Bush bore a individual resentment against Saddam, convinced he had been responsible for a plot to assassinate his father, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore objected to that one of the biggest hotels in Baghdad had a ground design with a likeness of his parent's visage that each person had to tread upon.

Interrogation Methods

Yet it was Cheney who was part of the most vehement supporting invading Iraq, consistently referencing information documents that were either weak or totally deceptive. He backed what the Bush administration indirectly described as "intensive questioning", the employment of interrogation method and torture.

Responding to a Senate document in 2014 that found that no valuable data had come from the interrogation methods, Cheney dismissed the conclusions as "loaded with crap". He stated to Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to establish protocols and put in place programmes to apprehend the bastards who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and ensure it never happened again. That's exactly what they did and they merit a lot of credit."

External Perception

Cheney reveled in labels assigned to him by critics such as the Star Wars villain and The Prince of Darkness, and by the idea that he was a dark force directing Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 book about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Do I represent the malevolent mastermind in the shadows that operates invisibly come out of his hole? This represents a effective way to work, in fact."

Business Interests

Dispute over his commercial relationships accompanied him throughout his time as second-in-command. While he had limited background in corporate affairs but established relationships in military, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's largest oil and gas corporations, in 1995 as chairman and top executive.

In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's running mate for the White House. Contentiously, during the military campaign, Halliburton was given US contracts worth multiple billions.

It made him rich. His yearly compensation during his time at the firm grew from his quarter-million dollars when he was Pentagon chief to $4.4m. When he left in 2000 he had a package totaling more than $20m|twenty