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 age 84.
Cheney died Monday night due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according to a statement from his family. […]
Cheney was, in effect, the chief operating officer of the younger Bush’s presidency. He had a hand, often a commanding one, 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 terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Years after leaving office, he became a target of President Donald Trump, especially after 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 Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said in a television ad for his daughter. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He is a coward.”
In a twist the Democrats of his era could never have imagined, Dick Cheney said last year he was voting for their candidate, Kamala Harris, for president against Trump.
How nice of him. Given his part in steering the Republicans into the increasingly far-right morass it’s been in ever since Obama displaced Dubya, though, I’m disinclined to give him too much credit for finally seeing the light. Him and Rummy were the real power behind Bush the Younger, and though the latter must take ultimate responsibility for his catastrophe of a presidency, Dick & Don deserve as much blame. No mourning here.
