Former Vice President Dick Cheney dead at 84

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who under President George W. Bush advocated a muscular, take-no-prisoners foreign policy that plunged America into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has died. He was 84 years old.

Cheney died Monday evening with his “beloved wife of 61 years, Lynne, his daughters, Liz and Mary, and other family members” by his side, according to a statement from the Cheney family. The cause of death was complications of pneumonia and heart and vascular disease. He had health problems for years.

“For decades, Dick Cheney served our nation, including as White House Chief of Staff, Congressman from Wyoming, Secretary of Defense, and Vice President of the United States,” the statement said.

“Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country and live a life of courage, honor, love, kindness and fly fishing,” he continued. “We are grateful beyond measure for all that Dick Cheney has done for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man.”

As Bush’s right-hand man, Cheney became the most powerful vice president in U.S. history. He left the White House in 2009 as a deeply unpopular figure, scarred by the Bush administration’s military failures and by the perception that he defended torture.

Cheney’s fingerprints have marked decades of Republican foreign policy. But he turned sharply against the Republican Party after the election of isolationist President Donald Trump, and gained some respect in some Democratic circles through his outspoken public criticism of Trump.

After Trump falsely claimed to have won the 2020 presidential election and inspired the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Cheney called Trump a “coward” and said a “real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters.”

Cheney’s conservatism was a forward-thinking, swaggering ideology that favored an expansive role for the United States on the world stage.

At home, where he had less but nonetheless significant influence, Cheney, a gun enthusiast, advocated lower corporate taxes and deregulation of the energy sector. He split with Bush on same-sex marriage; while Bush opposed it, Cheney declared: “Freedom means freedom for all.” »

In 2006, during Bush’s second term, Cheney shot an acquaintance, Harry Whittington, with a 28-caliber Italian Perazzi shotgun while hunting quail in South Texas. Bullets fired from the gun lodged in Whittington’s face and near his heart and sent him to intensive care. Whittington survived and lived another 17 years.

Throughout Bush’s presidency, Cheney played a central role in shaping American foreign policy. And after 9/11, the vice president was instrumental in communicating intelligence reports that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had obtained weapons of mass destruction and could use them against the United States and its allies.

These reports supported the US decision in 2003 to launch the war in Iraq. The conflict ultimately cost the United States more than 4,000 troops and $700 billion, but it did not lead to the discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. America fought this war in tandem with the war in Afghanistan, launched in 2001 against the country’s ruling Taliban, who had provided sanctuary to the architects of the September 11 attacks.

Although the Iraq War was fought in part on baseless grounds, Cheney subsequently defended America’s role. He said Iraq had been the scene of terrorist activity and that the Iraqi government was working with Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks.

“I think it was the right thing to do,” Cheney told MSNBC in 2015. “Our goal was to topple Saddam Hussein. We did it.”

Cheney also strongly defended the interrogation methods used by the CIA against terrorism suspects after 9/11. During the Obama years, a Senate Intelligence Committee report described these techniques – which included simulated drowning – as brutal and ineffective. President Barack Obama himself said the program had “crossed a line” and veered into “torture.”

Cheney countered in a 2014 interview with NBC that “torture was what al-Qaeda terrorists did to 3,000 Americans on 9/11,” adding that there was “no comparison between that and what we did in terms of enhanced interrogation.”

He was especially irritated by the idea that the techniques weren’t working, saying the program was paying off. “I’ll do it again in a minute,” he told NBC.

Cheney’s influence waned during George W. Bush’s second term, as his policies became unpopular and the U.S. economy fell into a sharp recession. He and Bush left office under tense conditions.

Richard Bruce Cheney, son of a government soil conservation officer, was born Jan. 30, 1941, in Lincoln, Neb., and grew up in Casper, Wyo.

He dropped out of Yale and later received degrees from the University of Wyoming. Along the way, he married his high school sweetheart, Lynne Vincent, and avoided service in Vietnam, earning five draft deferments.

He began his career as a congressional intern and rose through the ranks to serve at the White House in the Republican administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

At age 34, Cheney became Ford’s chief of staff, making him the youngest person to hold the position. After President Jimmy Carter won the White House, Cheney went to Congress, where he served for a decade as a representative from Wyoming.

He gained respect for his work as Secretary of Defense during the presidency of George H. W. Bush, in part through his leadership in the Persian Gulf War in 1991. In that conflict, a U.S.-led coalition won a quick victory over Iraq, which, on Saddam’s orders, had invaded its neighbor Kuwait. Cheney opposed extending the campaign with a unilateral invasion of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, saying the move would have created a “quagmire.”

After voters ousted Bush elder from power in 1992, Cheney worked at a think tank and ran Halliburton, a giant oil company based in Texas. But he didn’t stay away from Washington for long.

When George HW Bush’s son had to choose a vice presidential candidate during his 2000 White House campaign, the younger Bush sought help from his father’s former adviser, asking Cheney to lead the search.

Cheney interviewed and vetted a number of candidates. After considering the options, Cheney chose for himself.

With the daily news team