He was defense secretary under President George H.W. Bush during Operation Desert Storm. He was vice president under the younger Bush during the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Dick Cheney, who passed away Tuesday at the age of 84, was arguably one of the most powerful and influential US vice presidents in history.
Cheney was, it was said again and again on the day of his passing, President George W. Bush’s chief operating officer.
And as COO, he was one of the most forceful and outspoken proponents for regime change in Iraq – perhaps his most lasting, and darkest, legacy.
“Simply stated,” he said at the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in August 2002, “there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.”
Simply stated, the Iraqi president didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction. He was not amassing them to use against anyone. Yet those mythical “WMDs” were the pretext for a war and subsequent costly, clumsy, and heavy-handed occupation that opened a Pandora’s box of bloodshed, displacement, terrorism and tyranny. The box is still open.
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