Dick Cheney became one of the most powerful vice-presidents in US history as George W. Bush's number two during 9/11 and catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Photo / Luke Frazza, AFP
Dick Cheney became one of the most powerful vice-presidents in US history as George W. Bush's number two during 9/11 and catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Photo / Luke Frazza, AFP
Dick Cheney, who became one of the most powerful vice-presidents in US history as George W. Bush’s number two during 9/11 and catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, has died. He was 84.
Cheney forged an influential role in the traditionally inconsequential job and was a major power behind thethrone as Bush thrust America into the so-called war on terror, with a dark underbelly of renditions, torture and the Guantanamo prison site.
A hate-figure to many on the left, he made a remarkable pivot towards the end of his life when he opposed Donald Trump’s ultimately successful campaign to return to the White House last year.
Cheney’s daughter Liz Cheney, a former congresswoman from Wyoming, said her deeply Republican father had voted for Trump’s Democratic opponent Kamala Harris.
Cheney, also a former congressman and defence secretary, “died due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease”, according to his family.
As 46th vice-president, Cheney served two terms between 2001 and 2009.
The job is often frustrating for ambitious politicians, but Cheney’s Machiavellian skills gave him considerable sway.
He helped usher in an aggressive notion of executive power, believing the president should be able to operate almost unfettered by lawmakers or the courts, particularly during wartime.
It helped lead Bush into military quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq, and prompted major controversy over his impact on civil liberties.
Bush on Tuesday (local time) hailed his former vice-president as “among the finest public servants of his generation” and “the one I needed” when in the White House.
Cheney was “a patriot who brought integrity, high intelligence and seriousness of purpose to every position he held”, Bush added.
Neo-con
Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, on January 30, 1941, Cheney grew up mostly in the sparsely populated western state of Wyoming.
He attended Yale University but dropped out of the prestigious east coast school and earned a degree in political science at the University of Wyoming.
He spent 10 years in Congress as a representative for Wyoming before George H.W. Bush appointed him defence secretary in 1989.
Cheney presided over the Pentagon during the 1990-91 Gulf War, in which a US-led coalition evicted Iraqi troops from Kuwait.
As vice-president, Cheney brought his neo-conservative ideology to the White House and played a greater role in making major policy decisions than many of his predecessors in the role.
The US was dragged into war in Afghanistan during Dick Cheney's time as vice-president. Photo / Jim Huylebroek, New York Times
Cheney was one of the driving forces behind the decision to invade Iraq after Al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 on New York and Washington.
His inaccurate claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction fuelled the drumbeat for war ahead of the 2003 US invasion.
Seen as Bush’s mentor on foreign policy, Cheney remained loyal to his former boss and a staunch defender of Bush-era policies.
In a 2015 interview, Cheney said he had no regrets over the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and credited a so-called “enhanced interrogation programme” for the capture of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden in 2011 during Barack Obama’s presidency.
Despite a preference for privacy, Cheney was rarely out of the headlines.
He once hurled an expletive at a Democratic senator on the Senate floor and infamously accidently shot his friend Harry Whittington in the face during a hunting trip.
His professional life was punctuated by a series of health scares - he suffered five heart attacks between 1978 and 2010, including one in 2000, the year he and Bush were elected to the White House.
He underwent quadruple bypass surgery and had a pacemaker fitted in 2001, which was later replaced.
