Ex- Second-in-Command Dick Cheney: A Look Back on the Powerful Time in Office

The deceased US vice-president Dick Cheney, who died at age 84, was considered one of the most significant occupants of the vice-presidency in the nation's history. Although many vice-presidents were limited to minor or symbolic roles, Cheney exercised substantial power during the term of George W Bush, so much so that he was frequently called as the "actual president".

Bush objected to such a characterisation and claimed the relationship was more complicated. He noted that Cheney was courteous, invariably addressing him in public as the President, while he called him as Dick. Bush challenged even portrayals of their partnership as a partnership because it indicated that they were equals. Despite these denials, Cheney found the relaxed president malleable on a wide array of policy decisions.

A Aftermath of 9/11

At the head of a faction of conservative hawks that included military head Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 attack, Bush had been participating in a gathering at a elementary school in Florida. While Bush traveled to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took command, directing the shooting down of any unresponsive planes approaching the Capitol building.

Cheney said the strikes altered his perspective, making him become focused on retribution. Along with other neo-conservatives, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a takeover of Afghanistan in an endeavor to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the military action of Iraq, even though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein having involvement.

Controversial Actions

He showed no remorse about the military campaign, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis perished, and not about the waterboarding of individuals apprehended after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was based on misleading intelligence echoed by Cheney, was the correct path to take. "It was the right thing to do back then. I had faith then and I hold that view presently."

However even then, there were contrary opinions at a high level about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the White House's own special envoys to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the role. "I observed, at the very least," he later wrote "clear negligence, negligence, and recklessness: potentially, falsehoods, incompetence, and graft."

Wider Perspective

Cheney was not entirely to blame for the Iraq campaign. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had composed a memo detailing circumstances in which American interests might be endangered (featuring "availability of vital raw materials, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "the US should be prepared to act independently when joint efforts cannot be arranged," specifically citing military moves against Iraq.

Bush also had assumed the Oval Office generally inclined on executing what his parent had specifically avoided to do in 1991; remove Saddam. After he had been sacked by the administration, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his objective of diminishing America's participation in the regional tensions and mooted armed intervention against Iraq.

Bush bore a individual resentment against Saddam, thinking he had been responsible for a plot to kill his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore disliked that one of the largest accommodations in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his predecessor's visage that all visitors had to walk over.

Investigation Approaches

Yet it was Cheney who was one of the most vehement supporting striking Iraq, consistently citing agency briefings that were either weak or entirely deceptive. He backed what the Bush government euphemistically referred to as "advanced techniques", the use of interrogation method and physical pressure.

Addressing a Senate analysis in 2014 that found that no actionable intelligence had come from the harsh techniques, Cheney rejected the conclusions as "riddled with crap". He informed Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to implement measures and create procedures to capture the bastards who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it never happened again. That is precisely what they did and they deserve a lot of credit."

Public Persona

Cheney took pleasure in monikers assigned to him by detractors such as the dark character and the sinister presence, and by the idea that he was a dark force controlling Bush. In the journalist's 2013 volume about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Do I represent the sinister strategist in the shadows that nobody ever sees come out of his domain? This represents a effective way to operate, actually."

Corporate Connections

Dispute over his business interests accompanied him through his period as VP. Even though he had minimal expertise in business but established relationships in defence, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's most substantial energy conglomerates, in 1995 as chairman and CEO.

In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's election partner for the White House. Debatably, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was given US agreements valued at substantial sums.

It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly earnings during his tenure at the company rose from his previous salary during his time as military head to millions. When he left in 2000 he had a package worth over $20m|twenty