Former US Vice President Dick Cheney, “architect” of the Iraq war, has died at the age of 84

Dick Cheney, a driving force behind the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and regarded by presidential historians as one of the most powerful vice presidents in US history, has died aged 84, his family said in a statement on Tuesday.

Cheney died Monday night of complications from pneumonia and heart and blood vessel disease, his family said.

The Republican — a former Wyoming congressman and defense secretary — was already a major player in Washington when then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush tapped him to be his running mate in the 2000 presidential race that Bush won.

As vice president from 2001 to 2009, Cheney fought hard to expand the power of the presidency, having felt it eroded after the Watergate scandal that drove his onetime boss Richard Nixon from office. He also expanded the influence of the vice president’s office by establishing a national security group that often served as its own power center in the administration.

Cheney was a strong supporter of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and was among the Bush administration’s most outspoken officials, warning of the danger posed by Iraq’s alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons were found.

He clashed with several top Bush aides, including Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and defended “enhanced” interrogation techniques for terror suspects, which included sea and sleep deprivation. Others, including the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the UN special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, have called these techniques “torture”.

His daughter, Liz Cheney, also became an influential Republican lawmaker, serving in the House of Representatives, but lost her seat after opposing Republican President Donald Trump and voting to impeach him following the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by his supporters. Her father agreed with her and said he would vote for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in 2024.

“In the 248-year history of our nation, there has never been a person who poses a greater threat to our democracy than Donald Trump,” said the man who has long been an enemy of the left.

Cheney was troubled much of his life by heart problems, suffering the first of a number of heart attacks at the age of 37. He had a heart transplant in 2012.

Confronting Iraq

Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who were colleagues in the Nixon White House, were the main voices pushing for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In the run-up to the war, Cheney suggested there might be links between Iraq and al-Qaeda and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. A 9/11 commission later discredited this theory.

Cheney predicted that US forces would be “hailed as liberators” in Iraq and that the troop deployment – which would take about a decade – would “go relatively quickly … weeks, not months”.

Although no weapons of mass destruction were found, Cheney in later years insisted that the invasion was the right decision based on intelligence at the time and the removal of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power.

More than a decade earlier as defense secretary under President George H.W. Bush, Cheney had directed the US military operation to expel an Iraqi occupation army from Kuwait in the first Gulf War.

He urged Bush to take a hard line against Iraq after Saddam Hussein sent his troops to occupy Kuwait in August 1990. But at that point Cheney did not support an invasion of Iraq, saying the United States would have to go it alone and that the situation would become a stalemate.

Because of Cheney’s long ties to the Bush family and his experience in government, George W. Bush chose him to head his search for vice president in 2000. Bush then decided that the man doing the research was the best candidate for the job.

Upon re-entering politics, Cheney received a $35 million retirement package from the oil services company Halliburton, which he ran from 1995 to 2000. Halliburton became a top government contractor during the Iraq War. Cheney’s ties to the oil industry were frequently criticized by opponents of the war.

The first generation of Republicans

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 mother was a waitress turned softball player, his father a federal employee of the Soil Conservation Service.

Both sides of the family were staunch New Deal Democrats, he wrote in his 2011 book “In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir.”

Convinced that the president would want to know that he shared his birthday with the newborn, Cheney’s grandfather urged Marjorie and Richard to share the news via telegram to the White House.

In his family “he was the first Republican probably since my great-grandfather who fought in the Civil War on the Union side,” he said in the PBS documentary “Dick Cheney: A Heartbeat Away.”

He moved to Wyoming as a boy with his family before attending Yale University. “I was an average student, at best,” he said. He left.

“A Deadly Allergy to Olive Drabs”

Back in Wyoming in 1962, he worked in the construction of electric transmission lines and coal-fired power plants before eventually earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from the University of Wyoming.

At the time he recalled a visit from then-President John F. Kennedy, who spoke to the students about the importance of using what they were learning to build a better nation and a better world. “He had inspired us all, and at a time when I was trying to put my life back together, I was especially grateful for the sense of high potential he described,” Cheney wrote in his memoir.

In his 20s, Cheney strongly disagreed with students who shut down college campuses in protest against the Vietnam War, he recalled in his memoir. “As a general proposition, I supported our troops in Vietnam and the right of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to make the decision to engage there,” he wrote. He himself was never selected.

According to his biographer, John Nichols, Cheney repeatedly sought deferments and exemptions to avoid conscription. “Cheney reacted to the prospect of donning his country’s uniform like a man with a deathly allergy to olives,” Nichols wrote in The Nation magazine in 2011. Cheney said he would be happy to serve.

Hugging Darth Vader

Cheney went to Washington in 1969 as a congressional intern and held various White House jobs during the Republican administrations of Nixon and Gerald Ford. One of his early mentors was Rumsfeld, who served as Secretary of Defense in both the Ford and George W Bush administrations. When Cheney became Ford’s chief of staff, he succeeded Rumsfeld.

During the 10 years he served as Wyoming’s sole congressman, Cheney had a highly conservative record, voting consistently against abortion rights. He also voted against the release of imprisoned South African leader Nelson Mandela and against arms control and funding measures for the environment and education.

His wife Lynne, who was his high school sweetheart, became a conservative voice on cultural issues. Liz, the couple’s eldest daughter, was elected to Parliament in 2016 after building a reputation for promoting hawkish foreign policy views similar to her father’s.

During his time as vice president, late night comedians referred to Cheney as Darth Vader. He shrugged it off by joking that he was honored to be compared to the “Star Wars” villain, even dressing up as Vader for an appearance on the “Tonight Show” to promote his memoir.

“Thank You Satan”

Even before Trump’s rise, his support for conservative issues was uneven. His second daughter, Mary, a Republican fundraiser, is a lesbian. Cheney has spoken out in support of same-sex relationships, putting him at odds with the Bush administration’s push for a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage. This amendment ultimately failed.

In 2006 he made headlines during a hunting trip in Texas when he accidentally injured his friend, Texas attorney Harry Whittington, in the face with bird spray.

Controversy continued for Cheney even after he left the Bush administration. He was the subject of a scathing 2018 biopic called Vice, starring Christian Bale, who gained 18 pounds and shaved his head to mimic the ex-vice president’s gruffness and baldness.

“I thank Satan for giving me the inspiration for how to play this role,” Bale said when accepting the Golden Globe Award for his portrayal of Cheney.

During a book tour for his memoir, Cheney seemed to enjoy drawing the ire of critics. Shortly before its release, he gleefully predicted it would set heads “exploding” across Washington.

He devoted parts of the book to settling scores with former colleagues, such as Rice, whom he portrayed as naïve. Cheney also took aim at then-President Barack Obama’s worldview, puzzling over the Democrat’s concern that the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba was damaging to America’s image.