Former Vice-President Dick Cheney: An Examination on the Impactful Political Career

The deceased US second-in-command Dick Cheney, who has died at the age of 84, was considered arguably the most powerful incumbents of the vice-presidency in US history. While numerous VPs were confined to peripheral or figurehead positions, Cheney exercised huge power during the term of George W Bush, to the point that he was commonly referred to as the "true president".

Bush resented such a characterisation and claimed the connection was more complex. He noted that Cheney was respectful, invariably calling him in public as Mr President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush questioned even characterisations of their partnership as a partnership because it suggested that they were on equal footing. Regardless of such protestations, Cheney found the laidback president pliable on a broad range of governmental choices.

A Aftermath of 9/11

At the head of a faction of conservative hawks that included defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. At the time of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been taking part in a session at a elementary school in Florida. Whereas Bush traveled to a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, commanding the destruction of any unresponsive planes nearing the government building.

Cheney said the attacks transformed him, leading him to become determined on retribution. Along with other conservative figures, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he lobbied for a invasion of Afghanistan in an attempt to capture Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the armed intervention of Iraq, even though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein being involved.

Controversial Policies

He showed no remorse about the armed intervention, in which an reckoned 100,000 Iraqis died, or about the waterboarding of detainees rounded up after 9/11. He informed CNN in 2015 that the Iraq military action, which was founded on inaccurate information echoed by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It represented the right thing to do then. I believed it then and I hold that view presently."

But during that period, there were dissenting voices at a high level about the poor management of Iraq. One of the White House's own delegates to the region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the role. "I observed, at the very least," he subsequently stated "obvious failure, negligence, and recklessness: at worst, deception, ineptitude, and graft."

Additional Factors

Cheney was not solely to blame for the Iraq military action. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for such action. He had written a memo outlining scenarios in which national priorities might be threatened (including "obtaining vital raw materials, mostly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had contended that "the US should be positioned to take unilateral action when collective action cannot be orchestrated," particularly citing defense operations against Iraq.

Bush too had assumed the White House generally inclined on executing what his predecessor had specifically avoided to do in 1991; remove Saddam. After he had been dismissed by the president, the finance chief Paul O'Neill revealed how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his intention of reducing America's involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mooted armed intervention against Iraq.

Bush held a personal grudge against Saddam, convinced he had been responsible for a plot to assassinate his parent, President George HW Bush, on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. He furthermore disliked that one of the largest accommodations in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his parent's visage that each person had to tread upon.

Investigation Approaches

Yet it was Cheney who was part of the most outspoken behind invading Iraq, consistently quoting agency briefings that were both weak or totally inaccurate. He backed what the Bush government politely called as "advanced techniques", the use of simulated drowning and physical pressure.

Responding to a Senate report in 2014 that found that no valuable data had resulted from the harsh techniques, Cheney disregarded the findings as "riddled with crap". He informed Fox News: "We instructed [the CIA] to establish protocols and create initiatives to apprehend 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 deserve a lot of praise."

External Perception

Cheney reveled in nicknames assigned to him by critics such as Darth Vader and the dark figure, and by the idea that he was a shadow power directing Bush. In the journalist's 2013 volume about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is cited as commenting: "Is it me who is the malevolent mastermind in the corner that operates invisibly leave his hole? This represents a advantageous way to operate, truthfully."

Commercial Ties

Controversy over his commercial relationships accompanied him through his period as second-in-command. Even though he had minimal expertise in corporate affairs but good contacts in defence, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a position at Halliburton, one of the world's largest energy conglomerates, in 1995 as chairman and chief executive.

In 2000 he was selected as Bush's election partner for the White House. Controversially, during the military campaign, Halliburton was awarded US agreements valued at substantial sums.

It significantly boosted his finances. His yearly compensation during his time at the company increased from his $258,394 when he was military head to $4.4m. When he left in 2000 he had a compensation package worth over $20m|twenty