One-time Second-in-Command Dick Cheney: An Examination on His Powerful Time in Office

The former US vice-president Dick Cheney, who passed away at age 84, was regarded as among the most powerful occupants of that office in the nation's history. While many VPs were confined to peripheral or figurehead functions, Cheney wielded enormous power during the administration of George W Bush, to such an extent that he was often described as the "true president".

Bush disliked that description and stated the dynamic was more complex. He pointed out that Cheney was courteous, invariably addressing him in public settings as President, while he addressed him as Dick. Bush disputed even characterisations of their association as a collaboration because it implied that they were peers. Regardless of these objections, Cheney considered the relaxed president pliable on a whole raft of administrative determinations.

A Period Following the Attacks

Leading of a faction of neo-conservatives that featured Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, he strongly advocated the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. During of the 9/11 strike, Bush had been taking part in a gathering at a elementary school in Florida. Whereas Bush headed for a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took charge, directing the downing of any unidentified airplanes heading toward the government building.

Cheney said the assaults transformed him, causing him to be intent on retaliation. Together with other neo-cons, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a takeover of Afghanistan in an attempt to seize Osama bin Laden. Cheney then pressed fiercely for the armed intervention of Iraq, although there was insufficient indication of Saddam Hussein being involved.

Disputed Decisions

He expressed no regrets about the armed intervention, in which an estimated 100,000 Iraqis died, nor about the enhanced interrogation of individuals rounded up after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion, which was predicated on faulty reports repeated by Cheney, was the correct course of action. "It proved to be the right thing to do back then. I had faith at the time and I maintain that stance today."

But 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 region, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not reappointed from the position. "I witnessed, at a minimum," he wrote later "true dereliction, carelessness, and recklessness: in the worst case, falsehoods, incompetence, and dishonesty."

Additional Factors

Cheney was not solely responsible for the Iraq campaign. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had called for similar measures. He had composed a memo detailing circumstances in which national priorities might be threatened (including "obtaining essential resources, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the US should be postured to take unilateral action when collective action prove impossible," explicitly mentioning defense operations against Iraq.

Bush also had arrived in the presidency vaguely intent on carrying out what his father had specifically avoided to do in 1991; topple Saddam. Following he had been fired by the administration, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill disclosed how, at the first meeting of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had declared his intention of reducing America's participation in the Middle East dispute and mooted armed intervention against Iraq.

Bush bore a personal grudge against Saddam, believing he had been behind a scheme to murder his predecessor, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He also resented that one of the largest accommodations in Baghdad had a ground design with a image of his predecessor's face that all visitors had to step on.

Questioning Techniques

Yet it was Cheney who was among the most outspoken behind attacking Iraq, repeatedly citing intelligence reports that were both insubstantial or entirely inaccurate. He backed what the Bush White House indirectly described as "advanced techniques", the application of simulated drowning and torture.

Responding to a Senate analysis in 2014 that concluded that no valuable data had come from the harsh techniques, Cheney rejected the conclusions as "full of crap". He informed Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to take steps and put in place programmes to apprehend the perpetrators who took the lives of 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it was not repeated. That was specifically what they did and they earn a lot of praise."

Public Persona

Cheney took pleasure in nicknames assigned to him by detractors such as the Star Wars villain and the dark figure, and by the notion that he was a sinister influence controlling Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 volume about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is reported as stating: "Is it me who is the evil genius in the shadows that nobody ever sees emerge from his lair? That is a nice way to operate, truthfully."

Business Interests

Debate over his corporate affiliations pursued him throughout his time as vice-president. Even though he had limited background in corporate affairs but good contacts in defence, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's biggest petroleum corporations, in 1995 as chair and CEO.

In 2000 he was selected as Bush's VP candidate for the White House. Debatably, during the military campaign, Halliburton was awarded US deals worth multiple billions.

It made him rich. His yearly compensation during his tenure at the corporation rose from his $258,394 during his time as military head to $4.4m. When he departed in 2000 he had a compensation package worth in excess of $20m|twenty