Dick Cheney, the former US vice president and chief architect of the “war on terror”, died on Tuesday. He was 84 years old. In 2000, the outspoken critic of Trump was reportedly asked by George W. Bush to help him select a vice presidential candidate. Ironically, the search ended with the swearing in of Cheney himself.
Cheney even claimed during the 2024 election that “there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.”
His death brought the curtains down on a remarkable, often controversial career that spanned the Cold War, the Gulf War, the “War on Terror.”
Dick Cheney’s career
Dick Cheney was born in Nebraska. After a rocky journey at Yale, where he struggled with academics and eventually dropped out, Cheney took a job on a power line. He later returned to his home state and earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in political science from the University of Wyoming.
The former Wyoming congressman, White House chief of staff and defense secretary was leading a successful corporate career when George W. Bush reportedly asked him to help select a vice presidential nominee.
Ironically, the search for a disputed election ended with Cheney himself being sworn in as US vice president alongside George Bush as president, CNN reported.
In 1989, President George HW Bush appointed Dick Cheney as Secretary of Defense, where Cheney oversaw Operation Desert Storm, the rapid US-led campaign that drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait in 1991.
The Dick Cheney Controversy
Dick Cheney has been a frequent target of Democrats and other critics of the administration, particularly for his pre-Iraq war predictions and his ties to oil services giant Halliburton.
The treatment of prisoners taken by the US in its “war on terror” has also sparked controversy. After 9/11, Cheney continued to advocate the use of torture on detainees outside of office.
The powerful US vice president has even been portrayed in late-night comics and “Saturday Night Live” as a kind of Bush puppet master, an image he has rejected as ridiculous and offensive.
How Cheney Shaped the “War on Terror”?
Convinced that Saddam Hussein’s regime posed a serious and imminent threat, Cheney repeatedly warned of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and alleged ties to al-Qaeda.
Those claims—later discredited by intelligence reviews and congressional investigations—laid the groundwork for a war that would cost hundreds of thousands of lives and reshape America’s standing in the world.
Cheney claimed that he and his colleagues were acting on “the best available intelligence” at the time. “It was the right thing to do then. I believed it then and I still believe it now,” he told CNN in 2015.
After two terms as vice president that ended in 2009, Cheney has become one of the country’s most prominent Republicans to oppose Trump. During the 2024 presidential election, Dick Cheney even said he voted for Democrat Kamala Harris.
