WASHINGTON, Nov 4, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Dick Cheney, who became one of the most 
powerful vice presidents in US history as George W. Bush's number two during 
9/11 and catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, died Monday. He was 84.

Cheney forged an influential role in the traditionally inconsequential job 
and was a major power behind the throne as Bush thrust America into the so-
called war on terror, with a dark underbelly of renditions, torture and the 
Guantanamo prison site.

A hate-figure to many on the left, he made a remarkable pivot toward the end 
of his life when he opposed Donald Trump's ultimately successful campaign to 
return to the White House in 2024.

Cheney's daughter Liz Cheney, a former congresswoman from Wyoming, said her 
deeply Republican father had voted for Trump's Democratic opponent Kamala 
Harris.

Cheney, also a former congressman and defense secretary, "died due to 
complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease," according to a 
family statement.

As 46th vice president, Cheney served for two terms between 2001 and 2009.

The job is often frustrating for ambitious politicians, but Cheney's 
Machiavellian skills gave him considerable sway.

He helped usher in an aggressive notion of executive power, believing the 
president should be able to operate almost unfettered by lawmakers or the 
courts, particularly during wartime.

It was an approach that saw Bush enter military quagmires in Afghanistan and 
Iraq, and prompt major controversy over his impact on civil liberties.

Bush on Tuesday hailed his former vice president as "among the finest public 
servants of his generation" and "the one I needed" when in the White House.

Cheney was "a patriot who brought integrity, high intelligence and 
seriousness of purpose to every position he held," Bush added.

- Neo-con -

Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, on January 30, 1941, Cheney grew up mostly in the 
sparsely populated western state of Wyoming.

He attended Yale University but dropped out of the prestigious East Coast 
school and ended up earning a degree in political science back home at the 
University of Wyoming.

He spent ten years in Congress as a representative for Wyoming before being 
appointed defense secretary by George H.W. Bush in 1989.

Cheney presided over the Pentagon during the 1990-91 Gulf War, in which a US-
led coalition evicted Iraqi troops from Kuwait.

As vice president, Cheney brought his neo-conservative ideology to the White 
House and played a greater role in making major policy decisions than many of 
his predecessors in the role.

Cheney was one of the driving forces behind the decision to invade Iraq 
following the September 11, 2001 attacks by Al-Qaeda on New York and 
Washington.

His inaccurate claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction 
fueled the drumbeat for war ahead of the 2003 US invasion.

Seen as Bush's mentor on foreign policy, Cheney remained loyal to his former 
boss and a staunch defender of Bush-era policies.

In a 2015 interview, Cheney said he had no regrets over the 2003 invasion of 
Iraq, and credited a so-called "enhanced interrogation program" for the 
capture of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden in 2011 during Barack Obama's 
presidency.

Despite a preference for privacy, Cheney was rarely out of the headlines.

He once hurled an expletive at a Democratic senator on the Senate floor and 
infamously accidently shot his friend Harry Whittington in the face during a 
hunting trip.

His professional life was punctuated by a series of health scares -- he 
suffered five heart attacks between 1978 and 2010, including one in 2000, the 
year he and Bush were elected to the White House.

He underwent quadruple bypass surgery and had a pacemaker fitted in 2001, 
which was later replaced.