Dick Cheney, Bush's vice president and key figure in the "war on terror" after 9/11, dies

BarcelonaDick Cheney, one of the most powerful Republican politicians in the United States in recent decades, has died at the age of 84, his family announced in a statement. Cheney served as George W. Bush's vice president during his two terms (from 2001 to 2009) and was a prominent figure in the so-called "war on terror" and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Cheney died Monday night from complications of pneumonia and an illness. The Republican was one of the architects of the United States' response to the Al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, along with the president and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He was truly the one who held the reins of power behind Bush, and historians have considered him one of the most powerful vice presidents in history. He was a staunch supporter of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and one of the Bush administration officials who most strongly warned of the danger posed by Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction—the pretext used without any evidence to attack the country and overthrow Saddam Hussein. The invasion unleashed a war that added to the one Washington had already launched in Afghanistan two years earlier, and which lasted for much of the following decade, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths, mostly civilians.

Although these weapons of mass destruction were never found, Cheney insisted in later years that the invasion was the right decision based on the intelligence at the time. "It was the right decision. I believed it then and I believe it now," he said on CNN in 2015. The vice president also repeatedly defended the CIA's controversial interrogations of terrorism suspects after the 9/11 attacks, despite the evidence of torture"I would do it again," he affirmed when confronted with a 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report that concluded the interrogation methods were brutal and ineffective and responsible for damaging America's reputation in the eyes of the world.

A career tied to the Bush family

Cheney was born in Nebraska, but from a young age he was very close to power in Washington. He was also the only congressman from Wyoming in the House of Representatives, where he made his conservative stance clear, for example, on abortion and gun control. Before the age of 30, Cheney entered the White House, where he began as a congressional intern and held various positions during the Republican administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. One of his first mentors was Donald Rumsfeld, with whom he would later team up. More than a decade earlier, as Secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush, Cheney had already led the U.S. military operation to expel the Iraqi army from Kuwait during the first Gulf War.

Distancing from Trump

During the last presidential election campaign, Cheney made his distance from the more radical wing of the Republicans clear, even publicly announcing his support for the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, arguing that Donald Trump "tried to steal the last election using lies and violence." "There has never been anyone who poses a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump," he warned.