One-time Vice-President Dick Cheney: An Examination on the Influential Political Career
The late US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who has died at age 84, was seen as among the most powerful holders of that position in the nation's history. Although many vice-presidents had to settle for peripheral or symbolic functions, Cheney held substantial power during the presidency of George W Bush, so much so that he was frequently referred to as the "real president".
Bush resented that description and said the relationship was more nuanced. He observed that Cheney was courteous, invariably addressing him in public settings as President, while he called him as Dick. Bush questioned even characterisations of their association as a collaboration because it indicated that they were peers. In spite of these objections, Cheney viewed the easygoing president malleable on a broad range of policy decisions.
The Aftermath of 9/11
In charge of a contingent of neo-conservatives that featured military head Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been attending a meeting at a school in Florida. While Bush headed for a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, ordering the downing of any unidentified airplanes nearing the government building.
Cheney stated the strikes altered his perspective, making him become focused on revenge. Together with other neo-cons, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a occupation of Afghanistan in an endeavor to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then vigorously pushed for the invasion of Iraq, though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Disputed Policies
He expressed no regrets about the armed intervention, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis perished, nor about the waterboarding of individuals apprehended after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was predicated on faulty intelligence repeated by Cheney, was the proper path to take. "It proved to be the proper decision to do then. I was convinced back then and I hold that view presently."
Yet even then, there were contrary opinions at a senior level about the botched execution of Iraq. One of the White House's own representatives to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the post. "I saw, at the very least," he later wrote "clear negligence, inaction, and unaccountability: in the worst case, falsehoods, ineptitude, and dishonesty."
Broader Context
Cheney was not completely responsible for the Iraq campaign. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for similar measures. He had composed a memorandum detailing scenarios in which American interests might be compromised (including "access to crucial commodities, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "America should be positioned to take unilateral action when cooperative measures cannot be orchestrated," explicitly citing military moves against Iraq.
Bush also had assumed the White House vaguely intent on implementing what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; remove Saddam. Subsequent to he had been sacked by the White House, the treasury secretary Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his plan of lowering America's involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and suggested armed intervention against Iraq.
Bush held a personal grudge against Saddam, convinced he had been responsible for a plot to murder his parent, President George HW Bush, on a trip to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally objected to that one of the largest establishments in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a portrait of his predecessor's face that all visitors had to tread upon.
Questioning Techniques
But it was Cheney who was among the most outspoken behind attacking Iraq, repeatedly referencing agency briefings that were either weak or totally misleading. He endorsed what the Bush administration euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation", the use of waterboarding and torture.
Responding to a Senate report in 2014 that concluded that no useful information had come from the torture, Cheney dismissed the report as "full of crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to establish protocols and establish programmes to capture the perpetrators who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it was not repeated. That was specifically what they did and they earn a lot of praise."
External Perception
Cheney took pleasure in nicknames assigned to him by detractors such as Darth Vader and the dark figure, and by the notion that he was a dark force controlling Bush. In the author's 2013 book about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Am I the malevolent mastermind in the background that operates invisibly leave his lair? It's a advantageous way to work, truthfully."
Corporate Connections
Dispute over his commercial relationships pursued him through his period as vice-president. While he had minimal expertise in corporate affairs but strong connections in defence, especially in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's biggest energy companies, in 1995 as chairman and top executive.
In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's election partner for the presidency. Debatably, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was awarded US contracts valued at multiple billions.
It made him rich. His annual income during his tenure at the corporation rose from his quarter-million dollars when he was Pentagon chief to over four million. When he departed in 2000 he had a severance arrangement valued at more than $20m|twenty
