New Telegraph-Admin 
Erstwhile United States Vice President Dick Cheney died on Monday aged 84. In a statement yesterday, the Cheney family said he “died due to complications of pneumonia, cardiac and vascular disease”. Cheney, who oversaw the US government’s response to the 9/11 terror attack is considered the most powerful person to serve in the role.
The hard-charging conservative became one of the most powerful and polarising VPs in US history and a leading advocate for the invasion of Iraq. “For decades, Dick Cheney served our nation, including as White House Chief of Staff, Wyoming’s Congressman, Secretary of Defence, and Vice President of the United States,” the statement said.
“Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honour, love, kindness, and fly fishing.
We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man.”
The quietly forceful Cheney served father and son presidents, leading the armed forces as defence chief during the Persian Gulf War under President George H.W. Bush before returning to public life as vice president under Bush’s son, George W. Bush, reports The Associated Press. Cheney was, in effect, the chief operating officer of the younger Bush’s presidency.
He had a hand, often a commanding one, in implementing decisions most important to the president and some of surpassing interest to himself — all while living with decades of heart disease and, post-administration, a heart transplant. Cheney consistently defended the extraordinary tools of surveillance, detention and inquisition employed in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Years after leaving office, he became a target of President Donald Trump, especially after daughter Liz Cheney became the leading Republican critic and exam- iner of Trump’s desperate attempts to stay in power after his election defeat and his actions in the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said in a television ad for his daughter. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He is a coward.”
