One-time Second-in-Command Dick Cheney: An Examination on the Impactful Time in Office

The deceased US vice-president Dick Cheney, who died at the age of 84, was considered among the most influential occupants of the vice-presidency in American history. Although numerous VPs had to settle for marginal or figurehead positions, Cheney held enormous sway during the administration of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was frequently called as the "true president".

Bush resented that description and claimed the relationship was more complex. He noted that Cheney was courteous, consistently addressing him in public as President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush challenged even characterisations of their partnership as a collaboration because it indicated that they were peers. In spite of these objections, Cheney found the laidback president accommodating on a whole raft of administrative determinations.

A Aftermath of 9/11

At the head of a faction of conservative hawks that featured military head Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he pushed hard for the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been attending a session at a educational institution in Florida. As Bush traveled to a secure location in Nebraska, Cheney assumed control, ordering the downing of any non-communicating planes approaching the Capitol building.

Cheney said the attacks changed him, causing him to be determined on retaliation. Together with other neo-cons, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a takeover of Afghanistan in an effort to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, although there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein having involvement.

Controversial Policies

He voiced no apologies about the armed intervention, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis died, or about the harsh treatment of detainees apprehended after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was based on misleading information repeated by Cheney, was the right path to take. "It represented the correct action to do back then. I believed it back then and I hold that view presently."

Yet during that period, there were opposing views at a top tier about the poor management of Iraq. One of the White House's own delegates to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the role. "I witnessed, at a minimum," he wrote later "true dereliction, inaction, and recklessness: potentially, deception, unfitness, and graft."

Additional Factors

Cheney was not completely responsible for the Iraq invasion. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for comparable steps. He had written a document outlining situations in which national priorities might be threatened (featuring "access to crucial commodities, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the US should be prepared to operate alone when joint efforts prove impossible," particularly citing military moves against Iraq.

Bush too had arrived in the White House vaguely intent on carrying out what his predecessor had famously refused to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. After he had been fired by the White House, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his plan of lowering America's involvement in the regional tensions and suggested military action against Iraq.

Bush held a personal grudge against Saddam, believing he had been behind a conspiracy to murder his father, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally objected to that one of the most prominent hotels in Baghdad had a ground design with a image of his parent's countenance that all visitors had to step on.

Investigation Approaches

But it was Cheney who was among the most outspoken supporting attacking Iraq, repeatedly quoting information documents that were both weak or totally misleading. He endorsed what the Bush White House politely called as "intensive questioning", the use of simulated drowning and torture.

Answering a Senate analysis in 2014 that determined that no valuable data had resulted from the torture, Cheney dismissed the findings as "full of crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to establish protocols and create programmes to catch the bastards who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and ensure it would not recur. That was specifically what they did and they earn a lot of praise."

External Perception

Cheney reveled in monikers assigned to him by detractors such as the Star Wars villain and the dark figure, and by the idea that he was a sinister influence controlling Bush. In the author's 2013 publication about the duo, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Am I the malevolent mastermind in the corner that operates invisibly emerge from his lair? That is a nice way to operate, in fact."

Corporate Connections

Dispute over his corporate affiliations followed him throughout his time as VP. Even though he had minimal expertise in commerce but established relationships in security, notably in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to become part of Halliburton, one of the world's largest oil and gas conglomerates, in 1995 as chairman and top executive.

In 2000 he became Bush's election partner for the White House. Debatably, during the conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was given US deals valued at substantial sums.

It made him rich. His yearly earnings during his tenure at the firm rose from his $258,394 while Pentagon chief to over four million. When he resigned in 2000 he had a package worth in excess of $20m|twenty