Dick Cheney, arguably the most powerful vice president in US history as George W. Bush’s number two during the September 11, 2001, attacks and ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, died Monday. He was 84.Cheney forged an influential role in the traditionally inconsequential job and was a major power behind the throne as Bush thrust the United States into the so-called “war on terror,” with a dark underbelly of renditions, torture and the Guantanamo prison site.A hated figure by many on the left, he made a remarkable pivot toward the end of his life when he opposed Donald Trump’s ultimately successful campaign to return to the White House in 2024.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 defense secretary, “died due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease,” according to a family statement.As 46th vice president, Cheney served for 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 was an approach that saw Bush enter military quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq, and prompt major controversy over his impact on civil liberties.Bush on Tuesday 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.White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt pointedly offered no condolences when asked Tuesday about Cheney’s death.Trump “is aware of the former vice president’s passing,” she told a briefing, noting White House flags had been lowered to half staff “in accordance with statutory law.”- 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 ended up earning a degree in political science back home at the University of Wyoming.He spent ten years in Congress as a representative for Wyoming before being appointed defense secretary by George H.W. Bush 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.Cheney was one of the driving forces behind the decision to invade Iraq following the September 11, 2001, attacks by Al-Qaeda on New York and Washington.His inaccurate claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction fueled 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 program” for the successful hunt for Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US forces in 2011. 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.

Dick Cheney achieved influence unrivaled for a vice president in shaping US foreign policy, ruthlessly pursuing military might and advocating pre-emptive war to reshape the world.The descent of Cheney, who died Tuesday, was also spectacular. His hawkish brand of neoconservatism, including the invasion of Iraq, began to be repudiated even before he left office, and today both major US parties largely reject his views.With America shellshocked by the September 11, 2001 attack, Cheney — his grim demeanor accentuated when he spoke from dark bunkers — advocated a doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, with the United States attacking first before threats materialize, toppling hostile regimes if needed.Cheney also led the shattering of Western norms on treatment of prisoners, indefinitely jailing terrorism suspects without charges and approving “enhanced interrogation” techniques such as waterboarding that are widely considered torture.Cheney, a veteran Washington insider with no ambition to be president himself, quickly towered over the less experienced commander-in-chief, George W. Bush.”It would be hard to argue that he was not the most influential vice president,” said Aaron Mannes, a scholar of the American vice presidency who lectures at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy.Cheney gained clout by focusing narrowly on national security and enabled Bush by “pushing an open door.””There were a lot of stories of him being a sort of secret president — the Darth Vader — running everything. I’m not sure that’s true,” Mannes said. “It was more a matter of where he put his weight.” – Iraq bloodshed -The decision to invade Iraq still reverberates across the Middle East and haunts American foreign policy.Hundreds of thousands of civilians, as well as more than 4,000 US troops, died as the United States toppled Saddam Hussein and the country descended into sectarian bloodshed.Cheney by the end of his 2001-2009 term began to lose policy debates.Bush sided with his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and pursued diplomatic options such as talks with North Korea defying Cheney’s motto, “We don’t negotiate with evil; we defeat it.”Democrat Barack Obama swept to power rejecting Cheney’s worldview, offering an outstretched hand to those who “unclench your fist.”Less expected, Cheney’s Republican Party shifted direction, as many veterans came home to struggling communities and drug addiction.Donald Trump last year called Cheney “the King of Endless, Nonsensical Wars, wasting Lives and Trillions of Dollars,” though as president he has been eager to exert the swagger of force himself.In another turn that would have been unthinkable when Cheney was vice president and a hate figure for Democrats, he said he voted for Democrat Kamala Harris last year over Trump.He joined his daughter, former congresswoman Liz Cheney, who unlike many Republicans has spared no words in criticizing Trump as anti-democratic.Danielle Pletka, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who backed the Iraq war, nonetheless said she believed Americans still backed Dick Cheney’s idea that a “strong America is a power for good in the world.””And I don’t think Donald Trump would disagree with that characterization of his own stance,” she said.- Never prosecuted -Obama vowed on taking office that the United States “does not torture” but also decided not to prosecute anyone, hoping to turn the page.The prison for indefinite detentions on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — which Obama wanted to close within a year — remains open a decade and a half later, although with far fewer inmates.Sarah Yager, Washington director of Human Rights Watch, which long urged an investigation against Cheney, said the US breaking of norms emboldened other nations to torture.She also pointed to allegations of mistreatment of migrants sent by Trump to El Salvador.”There is a direct line from Vice President Cheney to the torture that the US is now complicit in in El Salvador,” she said.”It’s really a shame that accountability never closed the door for the United States on torture.”