Former US Vice President Dick Cheney Dies ‍at 84

Former United States Vice President Dick Cheney has died aged 84.

The passing of the Republican politician, who was deputy to President George W Bush from 2001 to 2009, was announced in a statement released by his family on Tuesday.

“His beloved wife of 61 years, Lynne, his daughters, Liz and Mary, and other family members were with him as he passed,” the statement said, adding that he died due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease.

“Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing,” the family said.

However, Cheney was a highly divisive political figure for many in the US and around the globe, having pushed the boundaries of the vice presidency to lead the Bush administration’s so-called “war on terror” and its misdirected invasion of Iraq.

Cheney was among the most outspoken of Bush administration officials warning, in the run-up to the 2003 conflict, of the danger from Iraq’s alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons were ever found.

Despite this, Cheney has insisted that the invasion was the right decision, based on the intelligence at the time, and noting that it led to the removal of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power.

Father and son

Cheney’s extended time at the top of US politics saw him serve father and son presidents.

He led the armed forces as defence chief during the Persian Gulf War under President George HW Bush before returning to public life as vice president under his son.

In the latter role, he fought vigorously for an expansion of the power of the presidency, having felt that it had been eroding since the Watergate scandal that drove his one-time boss Richard Nixon from office.

He also expanded the clout of the vice president’s office by putting together a national security team that often served as a power centre of its own within the administration.

He clashed with several top Bush aides, including Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and defended “enhanced” interrogation techniques of “terrorism” suspects that included waterboarding and sleep deprivation.

The US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the UN special rapporteur on counter terrorism and human rights called these techniques “torture.”

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 desperate attempts to stay in power after his election defeat and his actions in the January 6 Capitol riot in 2021.

“In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said in a television advert for his daughter.

In a twist of his Republican allegiances, Cheney said that he would vote for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in 2024.

Cheney was troubled much of his life by heart problems, suffering the first of a number of heart attacks at age 37. He had a heart transplant in 2012.