One-time Vice-President Dick Cheney: An Examination on His Powerful Government Service

The deceased US VP Dick Cheney, who passed away at the age of 84, was seen as arguably the most powerful occupants of the vice-presidency in American history. Although many vice-presidents were limited to marginal or figurehead positions, Cheney exercised huge sway during the administration of George W Bush, to the point that he was commonly referred to as the "true president".

Bush disliked such a characterisation and stated the relationship was more complex. He noted that Cheney was courteous, consistently referring to him in public as President, while he referred to him as Dick. Bush challenged even portrayals of their relationship as a partnership because it suggested that they were on equal footing. In spite of these denials, Cheney considered the easygoing president pliable on a broad range of administrative determinations.

The Post-9/11 Era

At the head of a contingent of neo-conservatives that featured Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he vigorously promoted the armed incursion of Iraq in 2003 in reaction to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. When of the 9/11 assault, Bush had been participating in a gathering at a school in Florida. While Bush headed for a secret bunker in Nebraska, Cheney took command, directing the shooting down of any unidentified planes nearing the government building.

Cheney claimed the assaults transformed him, causing him to be determined on retaliation. In conjunction with other conservative figures, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, he campaigned for a occupation of Afghanistan in an effort to apprehend Osama bin Laden. Cheney then strongly advocated for the military action of Iraq, even though there was no evidence of Saddam Hussein having involvement.

Disputed Actions

He showed no remorse about the military campaign, in which an approximated 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives, and not about the enhanced interrogation of suspects apprehended after 9/11. He told CNN in 2015 that the Iraq invasion effort, which was founded on inaccurate intelligence repeated by Cheney, was the correct decision. "It represented the correct action to do at that time. I believed it then and I maintain that stance now."

But even at the time, there were dissenting voices at a top tier about the mishandling of Iraq. One of the government's own special envoys to the area, General Anthony Zinni (2001-03), was not retained from the position. "I witnessed, as a baseline," he later wrote "obvious failure, negligence, and recklessness: at worst, deception, incompetence, and graft."

Wider Perspective

Cheney was not solely responsible for the Iraq campaign. Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz had pushed for comparable steps. He had written a document detailing scenarios in which national priorities might be endangered (encompassing "access to vital raw materials, mainly Persian Gulf oil"). Wolfowitz had asserted that "the US should be positioned to operate alone when joint efforts prove impossible," explicitly mentioning armed actions against Iraq.

Bush too had arrived in the White House vaguely intent on carrying out what his parent had famously refused to do in 1991; overthrow Saddam. Following he had been sacked by the White House, the Treasury head Paul O'Neill recounted how, at the initial gathering of the National Security Council in January 2001, Bush had announced his plan of reducing America's participation in the regional tensions and mooted defense operations against Iraq.

Bush bore a personal grudge against Saddam, thinking he had been responsible for a scheme to assassinate his father, President George HW Bush, on a journey to Kuwait in 1993. He additionally objected to that one of the most prominent accommodations in Baghdad had a surface artwork with a likeness of his parent's countenance that all visitors had to tread upon.

Questioning Techniques

However it was Cheney who was among the most vehement advocating attacking Iraq, frequently referencing agency briefings that were either weak or completely inaccurate. He supported what the Bush administration politely called as "intensive questioning", the employment of simulated drowning and physical pressure.

Answering a Senate report in 2014 that found that no actionable intelligence had resulted from the torture, Cheney rejected the conclusions as "full of crap". He informed Fox News: "We requested [the CIA] to take steps and establish initiatives to capture the individuals who murdered 3,000 of us on 9/11 and guarantee it never happened again. That was specifically what they did and they earn a lot of credit."

External Perception

Cheney took pleasure in nicknames given to him by detractors such as Darth Vader and The Prince of Darkness, and by the idea that he was a dark force controlling Bush. In Peter Baker's 2013 volume about the pair, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Cheney is quoted as saying: "Am I the evil genius in the shadows that operates invisibly leave his lair? This represents a nice way to operate, actually."

Business Interests

Dispute over his business interests followed him during his tenure as VP. Even though he had limited background in commerce but good contacts in military, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he was invited to join Halliburton, one of the world's largest petroleum conglomerates, in 1995 as chairman and CEO.

In 2000 he assumed the role of Bush's running mate for the White House. Debatably, during the military campaign, Halliburton was granted US contracts totaling substantial sums.

It greatly increased his wealth. His yearly compensation during his period at the corporation rose from his $258,394 when he was military head to $4.4m. When he resigned in 2000 he had a package worth in excess of $20m|twenty