Khaberni - The extremist American politician and member of the Christian Zionist movement Dick Cheney, who was considered the driving force behind the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and who was regarded by presidential historians as one of the strongest vice presidents in U.S. history, has died at the age of 84, suffering from complications related to pneumonia and cardiovascular diseases, according to a statement from his family released on Tuesday.
Who is Dick Cheney?
As a Republican, Cheney was a key player in Washington when then-Texas Governor George W. Bush chose him as his vice-presidential running mate in the 2000 election, which Bush won.
Serving as the vice president from 2001 to 2009, Cheney strongly fought to expand presidential powers after feeling they had eroded since the Watergate scandal that ousted his former boss Richard Nixon.
Cheney was one of the staunchest supporters of the 2003 Iraq invasion, and among the most outspoken Bush administration officials warning of the alleged Iraqi stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons were found.
Cheney clashed with many of Bush's senior aides, including Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and defended "enhanced interrogation" techniques for suspected terrorists, which included waterboarding and sleep deprivation. Others, including the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the UN Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights, described these techniques as "torture."
What was his stance on Trump?
His daughter, Liz Cheney, also became a powerful Republican lawmaker, serving in the House of Representatives but losing her seat after opposing Republican President Donald Trump and voting to impeach him following the attack by his supporters on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Her father agreed with her and said he would vote for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in 2024.
The man, long an adversary of the left, said, "In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been a person who represents a greater threat to our Republic than Donald Trump."
Cheney struggled with heart problems for most of his life, having his first of several heart attacks at age 37. He underwent a heart transplant in 2012.
What was his role in the Iraq invasion?
Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who were White House colleagues under Nixon, were the main voices pushing for the Iraq invasion in March 2003. In the pre-war period, Cheney hinted at possible links between Iraq and "al-Qaeda" and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. However, the 9/11 Commission later refuted this theory.
He predicted that American forces would be greeted as "liberators" in Iraq and that the deployment – which would last about a decade – "would be relatively quick... within weeks, not months."
Despite the absence of weapons of mass destruction, Cheney insisted in subsequent years that the invasion was the right decision based on the intelligence available at the time and the overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power.
More than a decade ago, when Cheney was the Defense Secretary under President George H.W. Bush, he led the American military operation to expel the Iraqi army from Kuwait in the First Gulf War.
