One-time VP Dick Cheney: A Retrospective on the Impactful Government Service
The late US VP Dick Cheney, who has died at age 84, was considered arguably the most significant incumbents of the vice-presidency in US history. Although countless VPs had to settle for peripheral or symbolic functions, Cheney held enormous sway during the term of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was frequently referred to as the "actual president".
Bush disliked this portrayal and stated the connection was more nuanced. He observed that Cheney was courteous, always referring to him in public settings as President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush challenged even characterisations of their partnership as a partnership because it implied that they were on equal footing. Regardless of such protestations, Cheney found the easygoing president malleable on a whole raft of governmental choices.
A Period Following the Attacks
In charge of a group of neo-conservatives that encompassed defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been attending a session at a educational institution in Florida. As Bush made his way to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, directing the shooting down of any unidentified airplanes approaching the Capitol building.
Cheney stated the strikes changed him, making him become determined on retribution. Along with other conservative figures, such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a occupation of Afghanistan in an endeavor to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the invasion of Iraq, though there was little proof of Saddam Hussein playing a role.
Debated Decisions
He expressed no regrets about the armed intervention, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis died, and not about the enhanced interrogation of individuals rounded up after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was founded on faulty reports circulated by Cheney, was the correct path to take. "It proved to be the correct action to do back then. I had faith at the time and I maintain that stance today."
However even at the time, there were contrary opinions at a high level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the White House's own delegates to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the post. "I saw, at a minimum," he later wrote "true dereliction, negligence, and unaccountability: at worst, lying, ineptitude, and corruption."
Wider Perspective
Cheney was not entirely to blame for the Iraq military action. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for such action. He had drafted a memo setting out scenarios in which American interests might be compromised (featuring "access to essential resources, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the United States should be positioned to operate alone when joint efforts cannot be orchestrated," explicitly mentioning military moves against Iraq.
Bush too had arrived in the White House vaguely intent on implementing what his father had famously refused to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. After he had been dismissed by the president, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the opening session of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his plan of reducing America's involvement in the Middle East dispute and proposed military action against Iraq.
Bush bore a individual resentment against Saddam, convinced he had been responsible for a conspiracy to murder his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally resented that one of the most prominent hotels in Baghdad had a floor mural with a image of his father's face that everyone had to step on.
Questioning Techniques
However it was Cheney who was part of the most outspoken supporting invading Iraq, consistently citing agency briefings that were both insubstantial or totally deceptive. He supported what the Bush administration euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation", the application of simulated drowning and torture.
Answering a Senate report in 2014 that determined that no valuable data had resulted from the interrogation methods, Cheney rejected the conclusions as "riddled with crap". He informed Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to implement measures and establish programmes to apprehend the bastards who took the lives of 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 credit."
External Perception
Cheney took pleasure in nicknames imposed on him by opponents such as the dark character and the dark figure, and by the notion that he was a dark force directing Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 volume about the two, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Am I the malevolent mastermind in the background that remains unseen emerge from his domain? It's a effective way to operate, actually."
Business Interests
Controversy over his business interests pursued him through his period as VP. Even though he had little experience in commerce but established relationships in defence, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's largest energy conglomerates, in 1995 as leader and chief executive.
In 2000 he was selected as Bush's VP candidate for the executive branch. Debatably, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was granted US deals totaling substantial sums.
It significantly boosted his finances. His yearly earnings during his tenure at the firm grew from his $258,394 during his time as Pentagon chief to $4.4m. When he resigned in 2000 he had a severance arrangement worth in excess of $20m|twenty
