One-time Second-in-Command Dick Cheney: A Retrospective on the Impactful Time in Office

The late US vice-president Dick Cheney, who died at age 84, was regarded as one of the most significant incumbents of that office in US history. While countless VPs had to settle for peripheral or symbolic functions, Cheney wielded substantial sway during the presidency of George W Bush, so much so that he was frequently called as the "actual president".

Bush disliked such a characterisation and stated the connection was more complex. He noted that Cheney was respectful, consistently calling him in official appearances as Mr President, while he called him as Dick. Bush questioned even characterisations of their partnership as a team because it indicated that they were peers. Despite these objections, Cheney considered the relaxed president accommodating on a wide array of administrative determinations.

A Period Following the Attacks

At the head of a contingent of neo-cons that featured Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in answer to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been taking part in a meeting at a elementary school in Florida. As Bush made his way to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, directing the shooting down of any unidentified aircraft nearing the Capitol building.

Cheney claimed the assaults changed him, leading him to become focused on retribution. In conjunction with other neo-cons, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a invasion of Afghanistan in an endeavor to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the invasion of Iraq, though there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein playing a role.

Controversial Decisions

He expressed no regrets about the armed intervention, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis perished, and not about the waterboarding of individuals rounded up after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was predicated on faulty intelligence repeated by Cheney, was the correct decision. "It represented the right thing to do back then. I believed it back then and I believe it now."

However even at the time, there were contrary opinions at a senior level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the White House's own special envoys to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the post. "I observed, at a minimum," he wrote later "clear negligence, negligence, and unaccountability: at worst, deception, ineptitude, and corruption."

Additional Factors

Cheney was not entirely responsible for the Iraq invasion. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had written a memorandum setting out scenarios in which US concerns might be compromised (including "obtaining vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "America should be positioned to operate alone when joint efforts prove impossible," particularly citing armed actions against Iraq.

Bush too had assumed the presidency somewhat determined on implementing what his parent had famously refused to do in 1991; remove Saddam. After he had been sacked by the White House, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had stated his intention of lowering America's engagement in the regional tensions and suggested defense operations against Iraq.

Bush bore a individual resentment against Saddam, believing he had been involved in a plot to kill his father, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He also resented that one of the most prominent hotels in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his predecessor's countenance that each person had to tread upon.

Interrogation Methods

But it was Cheney who was one of the most outspoken behind invading Iraq, repeatedly citing agency briefings that were both weak or totally misleading. He endorsed what the Bush administration euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation", the application of interrogation method and harsh treatment.

Answering a Senate report in 2014 that found that no useful information had resulted from the harsh techniques, Cheney disregarded the findings as "full of crap". He stated to Fox News: "We asked [the CIA] to establish protocols and establish programmes to capture the bastards who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it was not repeated. That's exactly what they did and they merit a lot of credit."

Public Image

Cheney reveled in nicknames assigned to him by detractors such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the notion that he was a sinister influence controlling Bush. In the journalist's 2013 book about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Do I represent the malevolent mastermind in the shadows that operates invisibly emerge from his lair? That is a nice way to work, actually."

Business Interests

Debate over his commercial relationships accompanied him during his tenure as VP. Although he had little experience in commerce but good contacts in military, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's biggest oil and gas corporations, in 1995 as chairman and CEO.

In 2000 he became Bush's election partner for the White House. Contentiously, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was given US agreements totaling multiple billions.

It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly compensation during his tenure at the company increased from his $258,394 when he was defence secretary to over four million. When he left in 2000 he had a compensation package valued at more than $20m|twenty