Dick Cheney, one of the most influential and controversial figures in modern American politics, has died at the age of 84. His family announced on November 4 that he passed away due to complications from pneumonia and long-standing heart and vascular disease. Cheney is widely remembered as a major force behind the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and is often described by historians as one of the most powerful vice presidents in American history. Many of the decisions he shaped during the George W. Bush administration continue to affect global politics today.
Before becoming vice president, Cheney had already spent decades in key roles in Washington. Under President George Bush served as Secretary of Defense from 1989 to 1993, overseeing the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 and leading the U.S. military response in the 1991 Gulf War after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. After leaving government, he became CEO of Halliburton, a major oil-services corporation. Despite never running for president, Cheney became one of the most dominant figures in American political life.
A vice president unlike any before
As vice president from 2001 to 2009, Cheney transformed the role into something far more powerful than it had been before. He pushed for an expansion of presidential authority, arguing that executive power had been weakened since the Watergate scandal. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Cheney built a national-security operation inside the vice-presidency that often acted as its own center of influence. He became central to the planning behind the Iraq War and to the creation of the broader “War on Terror”, which the U.S. used to justify military interventions across West Asia.
During the same period, Cheney remained a polarizing figure: admired by conservatives who valued his tough national-security approach and criticized by many others who saw him as responsible for major failures and abuses. His long career also included his time as Secretary of Defense under George H. W. Bush, when he oversaw the 1989 invasion of Panama, the 1991 Gulf War, and later moved into the private sector as Halliburton’s CEO.
For a man who never sought the presidency, Cheney left a political mark larger than many elected leaders.
Framing a new era of war
Cheney’s most influential roles, Secretary of Defense during the first Gulf War and vice president during the War on Terror, cemented his place in United States history. After September 11, he helped reshape the vice-presidency into a powerful driver of foreign-policy decisions and national-security strategy. He supported the doctrine of “preemptive war”, which allowed the U.S. to attack countries it believed might pose a future threat.
Cheney became a leading voice arguing that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Even though these weapons were never found, he continued to warn that Saddam Hussein was pursuing nuclear capabilities and had ties to terrorist groups.
In a 2002 speech in Bahrain, Cheney said Iraq’s alleged weapons programs were a major threat to the U.S. and the region. In 2006, he repeated that Iraq was “deeply involved with terrorism”.
Inside the Bush administration, Cheney clashed with several high-ranking officials, including Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. He also defended “enhanced interrogation techniques”, such as waterboarding and sleep deprivation, used on terrorism suspects. Many international organizations and north american government bodies later classified these methods as torture.
In 2005, Cheney warned that the War on Terror would require “decades of patient effort”, signaling a conflict with no clear end. The invasion of Iraq – justified by weapons that never appeared – ultimately killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and destabilized the region for years. Cheney later admitted that the War on Terror was also a battle for public opinion. In a 2007 speech, he said the USA needed to win the “hearts and minds” of people in the region, though critics argued that the real objective was to justify repeated U.S. military interventions.
The war brought enormous profits to military, oil, construction, and private-security corporations, including Lockheed Martin, Blackwater, Boeing, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, and Total. Cheney continued to defend his decisions.
In a 2015 Fox News interview, he insisted that removing Saddam Hussein had been the correct goal, even after confirming that the original claims about weapons of mass destruction were wrong.
Halliburton, contracts, and a trail of controversies
Cheney’s corporate past remained a shadow over his political decisions. As CEO of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000, he led a company that would later secure enormous no-bid contracts in Iraq, raising persistent questions about conflicts of interest.
After the invasion, American and British corporations gained control over reconstruction and oil projects in Iraq. Halliburton and its subsidiary KBR received significant contracts to rebuild infrastructure and even constructed parts of the Guantánamo Bay detention center, where torture allegations would later surface. Human Rights First detailed abuses associated with the facility.
A Financial Times investigation found that Halliburton received US$39.5 billion of the US$138 billion awarded to Iraq War contractors. The company was also implicated in a large-scale corruption case in Nigeria, where executives paid US$182 million in bribes to secure a US$6 billion contract.
These controversies shaped Cheney’s public image. He became a champion of the Republican right while a target of the American left, though the political tides would shift dramatically in the years ahead.
The human cost of a global conflict
The consequences of the War on Terror remain visible across multiple countries. A 2023 report from Brown University’s Watson Institute estimates between 4.5 and 4.7 million deaths, direct and indirect, across Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan. Of these, 905,000 to 940,000 were direct casualties of warfare; the rest resulted from collapsing economies, destroyed health systems, environmental contamination, and long-term trauma.
Health-care breakdowns have been catastrophic. After the U.S. withdrawal, over 80% of Afghanistan’s health facilities became inoperable. In Syria, only 56% of primary-care centers remain functional. In Yemen, half of all health centers are out of service, contributing to soaring maternal and infant mortality rates. In early 2022 alone, more than 13,000 Afghan newborns died due to lack of care.
Environmental remnants of war continue to kill civilians. Iraq holds more than 55 million tons of debris contaminated with toxic materials, including depleted uranium. In Afghanistan, unexploded ordnance causes roughly 160 deaths per month, and nearly 80% of the victims are children. About 1,700 square kilometers of land remain contaminated, blocking agricultural use and resettlement.
The wars also displaced 38 million people. Syria accounts for 6.5 million internally displaced individuals and 5.6 million refugees. Afghanistan has 4 million internally displaced people, 60% of them children. Yemen has 3.6 million displaced citizens, many living in dire conditions with limited access to food and medical care.
Has the republican taken a new side?
In his later years, Cheney surprised the political world by speaking out against Donald Trump. Once a symbol of Republican conservatism, Cheney became a sharp critic of the party’s new direction. During the 2024 presidential race, he endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris instead of Republican Donald Trump, who ultimately won the election.
Two months before the election, Cheney announced he would vote for Harris, saying, “There has never been an individual who posed a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.” He accused Trump of trying to overturn the 2020 election “through lies and violence.”
Trump responded by calling Cheney an “irrelevant RINO”, meaning “Republican in name only” Cheney’s daughter, Liz Cheney, also endorsed Harris. Liz had already lost her position in Congress after voting to impeach Trump for his role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Her criticism of Trump cost her both political support and her seat.
In a final twist, Cheney, once a central figure of conservative power, ended his public life being praised by some of the same people who had condemned him decades earlier, while being pushed aside by the Republican Party he helped shape.
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The article above was edited by Camilly Vieira.
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