Ex- Vice-President Dick Cheney: An Examination on the Powerful Political Career

The former US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who has died at the age of 84, was considered among the most influential holders of that position in American history. Whereas countless VPs were limited to peripheral or figurehead functions, Cheney exercised enormous power during the term of George W Bush, to the point that he was often called as the "actual president".

Bush disliked this portrayal and said the connection was more complicated. He pointed out that Cheney was courteous, invariably referring to him in official appearances as the President, while he called him as Dick. Bush challenged even descriptions of their association as a team because it suggested that they were peers. Despite these objections, Cheney viewed the laidback president accommodating on a wide array of administrative determinations.

The Post-9/11 Era

At the head of a group 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 response to the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been attending a gathering at a elementary school in Florida. While Bush headed for a underground facility in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, ordering the downing of any non-communicating aircraft heading toward the US Capitol.

Cheney said the assaults transformed him, making him become determined on revenge. Along with other neo-conservatives, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he advocated for a invasion of Afghanistan in an endeavor to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then vigorously pushed for the armed intervention of Iraq, though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein having involvement.

Controversial Decisions

He voiced no apologies about the armed intervention, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, or about the enhanced interrogation of detainees captured after 9/11. He stated to CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was based on inaccurate information circulated by Cheney, was the right decision. "It represented the proper decision to do then. I believed it then and I maintain that stance now."

However even then, there were dissenting voices at a senior level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the government's own delegates to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the role. "I saw, at a minimum," he later wrote "clear negligence, inaction, and unaccountability: in the worst case, deception, unfitness, and graft."

Broader Context

Cheney was not solely to blame for the Iraq invasion. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for such action. He had written a memo outlining scenarios in which US concerns might be endangered (including "access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had argued that "America should be positioned to operate alone when cooperative measures prove impossible," explicitly referencing armed actions against Iraq.

Bush also had assumed the White House generally inclined on implementing what his parent had specifically avoided to do in 1991; remove Saddam. After he had been fired by the administration, the finance chief Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his objective of reducing America's participation in the Middle East dispute and mooted defense operations against Iraq.

Bush bore a private grievance against Saddam, convinced he had been behind a scheme to assassinate his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally objected to that one of the biggest hotels in Baghdad had a floor mural with a portrait of his father's visage that all visitors had to tread upon.

Questioning Techniques

Yet it was Cheney who was one of the most vehement supporting attacking Iraq, frequently quoting intelligence reports that were either weak or completely deceptive. He endorsed what the Bush White House indirectly described as "advanced techniques", the employment of waterboarding and harsh treatment.

Addressing a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no useful information had come from the torture, Cheney dismissed the report as "full of crap". He stated to Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to establish protocols and put in place procedures to apprehend the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it never happened again. That was specifically what they did and they merit a lot of credit."

External Perception

Cheney took pleasure in nicknames given to him by opponents such as Darth Vader and the dark figure, and by the idea that he was a sinister influence controlling Bush. In the journalist's 2013 publication about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Am I the evil genius in the shadows that operates invisibly come out of his lair? This represents a effective way to work, truthfully."

Commercial Ties

Debate over his commercial relationships accompanied him during his tenure as VP. Even though he had little experience in commerce but strong connections in defence, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's largest oil and gas companies, in 1995 as leader and top executive.

In 2000 he became Bush's VP candidate for the White House. Controversially, during the Iraq war, Halliburton was given US contracts worth billions.

It made him rich. His yearly earnings during his time at the firm grew from his $258,394 during his time as Pentagon chief to millions. When he departed in 2000 he had a package valued at more than $20m|twenty