Dick Cheney, who died Monday at age 84, became one of the most powerful vice presidents in modern U.S. history and a leading advocate for the 2003 Iraq invasion. He leveraged the office to shape core national-security choices on Iraq, surveillance and interrogation in the post-9/11 era.
According to Time, Cheney pushed an expansive view of executive authority that underpinned warrantless surveillance and CIA interrogation programs. The Associated Press notes that courts and shifting politics later checked parts of that agenda. However, Cheney altered how the U.S. wages counterterrorism, how intelligence is weighed in wartime and how presidents exercise power.
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What did Cheney do in the Gulf wars?
Cheney, the White House chief of staff under President Gerald Ford, gained more national prominence as defense secretary during the 1990–91 Persian Gulf War, an operation that expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Time called this a “lopsided victory” that cemented Cheney’s reputation as a competent public servant.
According to a research paper by Christopher Griffin in the journal Essais, Cheney later drew on that stature and a close partnership with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to exercise significant sway over Bush-era war planning.
How did he shape the larger war on terror?
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in the first year of his vice presidency, Cheney helped drive secret legal frameworks that widened surveillance and permitted harsh interrogations, arguing they were necessary to prevent new attacks. Cheney’s office built a powerful staff that monitored policy at every level and, at times, intervened in the process — effectively creating a vice presidential node that rivaled the National Security Council’s influence.
That model depended on President George W. Bush’s willingness to delegate and Cheney’s mastery of bureaucratic processes. The AP called Cheney the administration’s “chief operating officer.”
What is known about his role in the faulty WMD intelligence?
Time describes Cheney as a central public and internal voice in 2002, elevating claims of a terrorism-Iraq nexus and warning about weapons of mass destruction.
Griffin writes that Cheney amplified threat assessments and pressed the bureaucracy toward the case for war. EBSCO’s overview notes that the WMD used to justify the 2003 invasion “were never found.”
When and why did his influence recede?
Cheney’s influence declined during Bush’s second term, as court rulings and shifting political realities checked his agenda.
Griffin links the decline to Rumsfeld’s 2006 departure as defense secretary and the political backlash over the Iraq invasion and the years of war that followed.
Even then, Cheney backed the 2007 troop surge and remained a force in internal debates in the White House. In 2008, as he prepared to leave the vice presidency, Cheney downplayed his role in the Bush administration, describing himself merely as a presidential “adviser.” However, he and Bush had “understandings” about his role, Cheney said. “And he’s been absolutely true to his commitment to me, which was I’d have an opportunity to be a major participant in the process, to be part of his government, to get involved in whatever issues I wanted to get involved in.”
