Dick Cheney dies at 84: From vetting VP candidates to becoming Bush's running mate – a look at his career, controversies

Dick Cheney, former US Vice President and chief architect of the “war on terror,” passed away on Tuesday. He was 84-years-old. Back in 2000, the outspoken Trump critic was reportedly asked by George W Bush to help him select a vice-presidential candidate. Ironically, the search ended with Cheney himself being sworn in.

Cheney, had even claimed during the 2024 elections that “there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.”

His death pulled the curtains on a remarkable, often controversial career that spanned the Cold War, the Gulf War, the “war on terror”.

Dick Cheney career

Dick Cheney was born in Nebraska. Following a rocky journey at Yale, where he struggled with academics and eventually dropped out, Cheney took a job working on power lines. He later returned to his home state, earning both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in political science from the University of Wyoming.

The former Wyoming congressman, White House chief of staff, and defense secretary, was leading a successful corporate career when George W Bush asked him to help select a vice-presidential candidate, as per reports.

Ironically, the search ended with Cheney himself being sworn in as the US Vice President alongside George Bush as the President after a disputed election, reported CNN.

In 1989, President George HW Bush had appointed Dick Cheney as Secretary of Defense, where Cheney oversaw Operation Desert Storm, the swift US-led campaign that expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991.

Dick Cheney controversies

Dick Cheney was a frequent target of Democrats and other administration critics, especially for his predictions before the Iraq war and his ties to the oil services giant Halliburton.

The treatment of prisoners taken by the US its ‘war on terror’ also stirred controversies. Out of office, Cheney continued to defend the use of torture against detainees after 9/11.

The powerful US Vice President was even portrayed by late-night comics and "Saturday Night Live" as a sort of puppet master of Bush, an image he rejected as ridiculous and offensive.

How Cheney shaped the ‘war on terror’?

Cheney was convinced that Saddam Hussein’s regime posed a grave and imminent threat and he warned repeatedly of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and supposed links to al-Qaeda.

These assertions — later discredited by intelligence reviews and congressional investigations — laid the groundwork for a war that would cost hundreds of thousands of lives and reshape America’s standing in the world.

Cheney maintained that he and his colleagues acted on the “best available intelligence” at the time. “It was the right thing to do then. I believed it then and I believe it now,” he told CNN in 2015.

Following his two terms as vice president – which ended in 2009, Cheney became one of the nation's most prominent Republicans to oppose Trump. During the 2024 Presidential elections, Dick Cheney even said that he voted for Democrat Kamala Harris.