Rabat – According to a statement released by the Cheney family, former Republican politician and businessman Dick Cheney died on Monday evening surrounded by family due to cardiac and vascular disease.
Cheney was served as vice president and senior advisor to former president George W. Bush. He was deemed by many as the most powerful, controversial, and forceful vice president in US history.
Cheney was in office from 2001-2009. His hawkish policies, specifically in the Middle East, were the driving factors behind the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the “War on Terror” — a war that was the defining feature of not only Bush’s presidency, but also the state of America in the first decade of the century.
The “Cheney Doctrine” was the force behind America’s retaliation and foreign policy in response to 9/11. One of his first orders only hours after the terror attack was the deployment of jets to defend the capital, saying “If it looks threatening, take it out.”
This order would come to set the tone for Cheney’s policies in Iraq and the greater Middle East region: be on the offensive, strike first, and ask later — orders that applied to intelligence, detainment, the narrative of the conflict, and beyond.
Cheney was perhaps one of the loudest voices behind the accusation of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. No evidence of such weapons was ever found.
Interestingly, Cheney was a strong opponent of current US President Donald Trump. Cheney announced his support of presidential candidate Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, saying that “there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump”.
