Dick Cheney, highly effective former US vice chairman who pushed for Iraq conflict, dies at 84

Dick Cheney, a driving power behind the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, was thought-about by presidential historians as one of the crucial highly effective vice presidents in US historical past.

He died at age 84 on Monday, November 3, from problems of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular illness, his household mentioned in a press release on Tuesday.

The Republican — a former Wyoming congressman and secretary of protection — was already a significant Washington participant when then-Texas governor George W. Bush selected him to be his working mate within the 2000 presidential race that Bush went on to win.

As vice chairman from 2001 to 2009, Cheney fought vigorously for an growth of the ability of the presidency, having felt that it had been eroding for the reason that Watergate scandal that drove his one-time boss Richard Nixon from workplace. He additionally expanded the clout of the vice chairman’s workplace by placing collectively a nationwide safety workforce that usually served as an influence middle of its personal throughout the administration.

Cheney was a robust advocate for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and was among the many most outspoken of Bush administration officers warning of the hazard from Iraq’s alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons have been discovered.

He clashed with a number of prime Bush aides, together with Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and defended “enhanced” interrogation methods of terrorism suspects that included waterboarding and sleep deprivation. Others, together with the US Senate Choose Committee on Intelligence and the U.N. particular rapporteur on counter terrorism and human rights, known as these methods “torture.”

His daughter Liz Cheney additionally grew to become an influential Republican lawmaker, serving within the Home of Representatives however dropping her seat after opposing Republican President Donald Trump and voting to question him within the wake of the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol by his supporters. Her father, who agreed along with her, mentioned that he would vote for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in 2024.

“In our nation’s 248-year historical past, there has by no means been a person who’s a better menace to our republic than Donald Trump,” mentioned the person who had lengthy been a foe of the left.

Cheney was troubled a lot of his life by coronary heart issues, struggling the primary of various coronary heart assaults at age 37. He had a coronary heart transplant in 2012.

Taking over Iraq

Cheney and Protection Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who had been colleagues within the Nixon White Home, have been key voices pushing for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Within the run-up to the conflict, Cheney prompt there is likely to be hyperlinks between Iraq and al Qaeda and the September 11, 2001 assaults on the US. A fee on the 9/11 assaults later discredited this principle.

Cheney predicted US forces can be “greeted as liberators” in Iraq and that the troop deployment — which might final round a decade — would “go comparatively rapidly… weeks slightly than months.”

Though no weapons of mass destruction have been discovered, Cheney in later years insisted that the invasion was the correct determination based mostly on the intelligence on the time and the removing of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from energy.

Greater than a decade earlier, as protection secretary beneath President George H.W. Bush, Cheney had directed the US navy operation to expel an Iraqi occupation military from Kuwait within the first Gulf Battle.

He urged Bush senior to take an uncompromising line in opposition to Iraq after Saddam Hussein despatched his troops to occupy Kuwait in August 1990. However at that time Cheney didn’t help an invasion of Iraq, saying the US must act alone and that the scenario would develop into a quagmire.

Due to Cheney’s lengthy ties to the Bush household and expertise in authorities, George W. Bush selected him to go his vice presidential search in 2000. Bush then determined the person doing the search was the perfect candidate for the job.

Upon his re-entry into politics, Cheney obtained a $35 million retirement package deal from oil companies agency Halliburton, which he had run from 1995 to 2000. Halliburton grew to become a number one authorities contractor throughout the Iraq conflict. Cheney’s oil trade hyperlinks have been a topic of frequent criticism by opponents of the conflict.

The primary republican in generations

Richard Bruce Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, to Marjorie Lorraine (née Dickey) and Richard Herbert Cheney on January 30, 1941, the day then-President Franklin Roosevelt turned 59. His mom was a waitress turned softball participant, his father a federal employee with the Soil Conservation Service.

Either side of the household have been staunch New Deal Democrats, he wrote in his 2011 e book “In My Time: A Private and Political Memoir.”

Satisfied that the president would wish to know that he shared a birthday with the new child, Cheney’s grandfather urged Marjorie and Richard to share the information by telegram with the White Home.

In his household he “was the primary Republican most likely since my great-grandfather who fought within the Civil Battle on the Union aspect,” he instructed the PBS documentary “Dick Cheney: A Heartbeat Away.”

He moved as a boy to Wyoming together with his household, earlier than attending Yale College. “I used to be a mediocre pupil, at finest,” he mentioned. He dropped out.

‘A lethal allergy to olive drab’

Again in Wyoming in 1962, he labored on constructing electrical transmission traces and coal-fired energy stations, earlier than finally incomes undergraduate and grasp’s levels in political science from the College of Wyoming.

Of that point he recalled a go to by then President John F. Kennedy, who addressed college students on the significance of utilizing what they have been studying to construct a greater nation and a greater world. “He had impressed us all, and at a time after I was attempting to place my life again collectively, I used to be significantly grateful for the sense of elevated potentialities he described,” Cheney wrote in his memoir.

In his 20s, Cheney strongly disagreed with the scholars who shut down campuses in protest in opposition to the Vietnam Battle, he recalled in his memoir. “As a basic proposition, I supported our troops in Vietnam and the correct of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to make the choice to be concerned there,” he wrote. He himself was by no means drafted.

Based on his biographer, John Nichols, Cheney repeatedly utilized for deferments and exemptions to keep away from conscription. “Cheney reacted to the prospect of carrying his nation’s uniform like a person with a lethal allergy to olive drab,” Nichols wrote in The Nation journal in 2011. Cheney acknowledged that he would have been completely happy to serve.

Embracing Darth Vader

Cheney went to Washington in 1969 as a congressional intern and held varied White Home jobs throughout the Republican administrations of Nixon and Gerald Ford. One among his earliest mentors was Rumsfeld, who labored as secretary of protection in each the Ford and George W. Bush administrations. When Cheney grew to become Ford’s chief of employees, he succeeded Rumsfeld.

Through the 10 years he served as Wyoming’s solely congressman, Cheney had a extremely conservative report, persistently voting in opposition to abortion rights. He additionally voted in opposition to the discharge of imprisoned South African chief Nelson Mandela and in opposition to gun management and environmental and schooling funding measures.

His spouse Lynne, who had been his highschool sweetheart, grew to become a conservative voice on cultural points. Liz, the couple’s eldest daughter, was elected to the Home in 2016 after constructing a repute for pushing hawkish international coverage views just like her father’s.

Throughout his time as vice chairman, late-night tv comedians referred to Cheney as Darth Vader. He shrugged it off by joking that he was honored to be in comparison with the “Star Wars” villain, even dressing as Vader for an look on the “Tonight Present” to advertise his memoir.

‘Thanks to Devil’

Even earlier than the rise of Trump, his help for conservative points was not uniform. His second daughter, Mary, a Republican fundraiser, is a lesbian. Cheney spoke supportively of same-sex relationships, which put him at odds with the Bush administration’s push for a constitutional modification in opposition to homosexual marriage. That modification finally failed.

Mary and Liz each survive him, as does Lynne. All three have been with him as he died, the household mentioned.

In 2006 he made headlines throughout a searching journey in Texas when he unintentionally wounded his pal, Texas lawyer Harry Wittington, within the face with a sprig of birdshot.

Controversy continued to canine Cheney even after he left the Bush administration. He was the topic of a scathing biographical movie in 2018 titled “Vice,” starring Christian Bale, who gained 40 kilos (18 kg) and shaved his head to imitate the previous vice chairman’s paunchiness and baldness.

“Thanks to Devil for giving me inspiration on the way to play this function,” Bale mentioned in accepting a Golden Globes award for his Cheney portrayal.

Throughout a e book tour for his memoir, Cheney appeared to relish elevating the ire of critics. Simply earlier than its launch he gleefully predicted it will go away heads “exploding” throughout Washington.

He devoted components of the e book to settling scores with former colleagues similar to Rice, whom he depicted as naive. Cheney additionally took intention at then-President Barack Obama’s world view, puzzling over the Democrat’s concern that the US navy jail at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba was dangerous to America’s picture. – Rappler.com