Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney was Vice-President of the United States from 2001 to 2009 and is generally regarded as the most powerful holder of that office in its history. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1941 and raised in Casper, Wyoming, he dropped out of Yale twice and had two convictions for drink driving before taking degrees at the University of Wyoming. He received five deferments from the Vietnam draft, saying later that he had other priorities. He entered government as a congressional intern, worked under Donald Rumsfeld in the Nixon administration, and became Gerald Ford's chief of staff in 1975 at thirty-four, the youngest ever. He was elected to Congress for Wyoming in 1978 and served ten years, compiling a strongly conservative voting record and rising to House minority whip. As Secretary of Defense under George H. W. Bush from 1989 he oversaw the invasion of Panama and the Gulf War, and afterwards ran Halliburton, the oilfield services company, for five years. Asked in 2000 to lead the search for George W. Bush's running mate, he ended up recommending himself. He expanded the vice-presidency into an operational centre of government, with staff embedded across departments. He was the leading advocate of the invasion of Iraq, asserting that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted nuclear weapons and had links to al-Qaeda; neither claim was supported. He drove the legal architecture of indefinite detention, warrantless surveillance and the interrogation methods he called enhanced and others called torture, which he has continued to defend without qualification. He had five heart attacks and a transplant in 2012. He denounced Donald Trump and campaigned for his daughter Liz.
- Lived: 1941 CE – ?
- Nationality: American
- Roles: vice_president
