Dick Cheney, the hard-charging conservative who became one of the most powerful and polarizing vice presidents in US history and a leading advocate for the invasion of Iraq, has died at 84.
Cheney died on Monday due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, his family said on Tuesday.
The quietly forceful Cheney led the armed forces as US secretary of defense during the Persian Gulf War under then-US president George H.W. Bush before returning to public life as vice president under Bush’s son, George W. Bush.
Photo: AFP
Cheney was, in effect, the chief operating officer of the younger Bush’s presidency, 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,” George W. Bush said.
Cheney later became a target of US 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. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Trump said nothing about Dick Cheney publicly in the hours after his death was disclosed. The White House lowered flags to half-staff in remembrance of him, but without the usual announcement or proclamation praising the deceased.
Dick Cheney last year said he was voting for Democrat Kamala Harris for president against Trump.
For all his conservatism, Cheney was privately and publicly supportive of his daughter Mary Cheney after she came out as gay, years before same-sex marriage was broadly supported.
“Freedom means freedom for everyone,” he said.
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