Former Vice President Dick Cheney, the longtime politico from Wyoming known mainly for his strong grip on the Bush Administration and deep involvement in starting the 2003 Iraq War, has passed away at the age of 84, as was announced by his family in the early hours of the morning on Tuesday, November 4.
Mr. Cheney, who before his time as Vice President served in the United States House of Representatives, as White House Chief of Staff, as Secretary of Defense, and as CEO of Halliburton, died of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according to his family. He has had heart problems before, and had a heart transplant after suffering five heart attacks.
His family, in any case, released a statement about his death and legacy in which it said, “For decades, Dick Cheney served our nation, including as White House Chief of Staff, Wyoming’s Congressman, Secretary of Defense, and Vice President of the United States.”
Continuing, the statement briefly commented on his personal life and his love of fly fishing, saying, “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.”
Concluding, it called him a “noble giant of a man” and thanked him for his service to the country, saying, “We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man.”
Cheney is most remembered as the Vice President to George W Bush, as in that role he became what many have called the most powerful Vice President of all time, controlling a great many of the administration’s personnel choices and policy decisions, which is quite unusual for the normally mainly ceremonial position.
He used that power to become the driving force behind how the American Global War on Terror that followed 9/11 was fought, pushing for both the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and for the various secret missions and tactics, such as extraordinary rendition, used in the Bush years of the wars. He has stood by those wars and tactics, even saying, as Fox News Digital reported, “I feel very good about what we did. If I was faced with those circumstances again, I’d do exactly the same thing.”
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At the time, that mainly meant his neoconservative views made him an enemy of the political left, with Hillary Clinton even comparing him to Darth Vader, the Star Wars villain, a comparison in which he revelled and that he and his staff adopted and joked about.
Since then, however, Cheney has mainly been an enemy of MAGA Americans rather than the left, and in the 2024 election, Mr. Cheney threw his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris instead of President Trump. Justifying that, he said, “As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.”
Watch Rep. Donalds destroy Cheney over that endorsement of Kamala here:
Featured image credit: By Kevin Rutherford, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19195866