WASHINGTON — Dick Cheney, the hard-charging conservative who became one of the most powerful and polarizing vice presidents in U.S. history and a leading advocate for the invasion of Iraq, has died at 84. Cheney died Monday due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, his family said Tuesday. The quietly forceful Cheney […]
Dick Cheney, the hard-charging conservative who became one of the most powerful and polarizing vice presidents in U.S. history and a leading advocate for the invasion of Iraq, has died at 84.
Cheney died Monday due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, his family said Tuesday.
The quietly forceful Cheney led the armed forces as defense secretary during the Persian Gulf War under President George H.W. Bush before returning to public life as vice president under Bush’s son George W. Bush.
Cheney was, in effect, the chief operating officer of the younger Bush’s presidency. He often had a commanding hand in implementing decisions most important to the president and some of surpassing interest to himself — all while living with decades of heart disease and, post-administration, a heart transplant. Cheney consistently defended the extraordinary tools of surveillance, detention and inquisition employed in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“History will remember him as among the finest public servants of his generation — a patriot who brought integrity, high intelligence, and seriousness of purpose to every position he held,” Bush said.
Years after leaving office, Cheney became a target of President Donald Trump, especially after his daughter Liz Cheney became the leading Republican critic and examiner of Trump’s attempts to stay in power after his 2020 election defeat and his actions in the Jan.
