Former US Vice-President Cheney Dies
101 comments
·November 4, 2025delichon
red-iron-pine
the lesson of Nixon's later years (and heavily alcoholism) and Reagan's dementia and "plausible deniability" is that the GOP needs a face, while the plutocrats run the show. Chaney got his start under Nixon and was a Big Dick under Reagan.
HW Bush was the exception, but he raised taxes and generally pissed everyone off.
W and Trump are a return to form. Vance (channeling Thiel) and Stephen Miller are running the actual show.
null
yomismoaqui
Don't you find liberating that any human, no matter how powerful they may be, how good or bad they are, cannot escape from death?
Maybe it sounds a little dark or edgy, but this thought gives me peace. Imagine what an immortal tyrant could do to humanity...
willvarfar
(Interestingly, some of the world's dictators do seem to have an interest in the current state of the art in prolonging life. For example Xi and Putin chatted about organ replacement https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr70rvrd41ko)
theultdev
Until you learn it's not individuals, but groups of them with ideas that persist for multiple generations.
fatbird
There's apparently an old Japanese saying that goes "Asleep, one mat; awake, half a mat." It refers to the space on a mat that everyone, even the Emperor, occupies.
polotics
Good old Dick. This article from The Economist, about Abu Graib and Cheney's way to make friend, is I think a fitting obituary: <|trigger warning alert|> https://www.economist.com/culture/2008/05/15/tortured-truth <|seriously, Dick?|>
Findecanor
He had been one of the signatories of the "think-tank" Project for the New American Century's [1] founding statement of principles, alongside 24 others, including Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.
During the Clinton administration, the PNAC had lobbied for invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan — and then Iran from two sides, to install puppet regimes and secure the oil supply.
When GWB took over, Cheney became vice president and the administration got filled with many other PNAC members.
One of their documents from the '90s stipulated that to change public opinion for war there would have to have been be a significant "Pearl Harbour-like" event... which is something that naturally has stirred up a lot of conspiracy theorists.
The PNAC's membership lists and manifestos were at the time publicly available on their web site, now on archive.org [2].
It repeatedly surprises me that so few people didn't and still don't know about the PNAC.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C...
2. https://web.archive.org/web/20070208013451/https://www.newam...
roschdal
In February 2006, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and wounded Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old Texas attorney, during a quail hunting trip on a private ranch near Corpus Christi, Texas. Cheney was using a 28-gauge shotgun when Whittington stepped into the line of fire after retrieving a bird. The pellets struck Whittington’s face, neck, and upper torso.
Whittington was hospitalized and later recovered. The incident became a major news story, partly because the White House delayed releasing details for nearly a day, raising questions about transparency. Cheney later called the event “one of the worst days of my life” and publicly accepted responsibility.
The shooting has since become one of the most remembered and parodied moments of Cheney’s vice presidency.
blitzar
Harry Whittington Apologizes for Getting Shot in the Face by Dick Cheney.
Thats real power.
potato3732842
100yr from now shotgun buyers and sellers will still be cracking jokes about shooting lawyers.
righthand
What's missing from this story is that Dick Cheney had the man he shot do a press tour apologizing to Dick Cheney and his family for causing any duress.
the_real_cher
His company Halliburton was the supplier for all the Gulf Wars and the Vietnam war.
I suspect that they were not lobbying to end any of these wars and were profiting greatly off of soldiers deaths.
Theres a high level of dislike for him probably justly earned.
shortrounddev2
Halliburton gave Cheney $34mil when he left the company to go be Vice President
derwiki
War is a Racket - Smedley Butler
ajross
> Theres a high level of dislike for him probably justly earned.
Pretty much. At the same time, he didn't blow it all up. Cheney sits in the same class as figures like Kissinger. You can view them as Machiavellian overlords doing terrible things in pursuit of their personal agendas, sure.
But those agendas turn out... maybe not to be so terribly terrible in hindsight? I'm not saying the Iraq war wasn't a terrible mistake or that the end result of the fighting in Vietnam was worth the horrifying suffering of its people. But the post-war and post-cold-war USA hegemony was defined by a single nation with a strong executive able to wield these terrible powers to terrible effect, with really very little check on its external (or internal) actions.
And, again, they didn't blow it all up. And I think that counts for something. Especially in the current climate where we're looking at a much less temperate regime actively trying to blow it all up.
I guess I'm saying that I'd trust Cheney with the buttons and levers and know that my kids could fix what he broke. I'm not so confident now.
smt88
Your argument seems to be that Cheney's culpability for hundreds of thousands of dead civilians, trillions of wasted dollars, and multiple regime changes in the Middle East were all kind of OK because they [checks notes] didn't end global US hegemony?
That's an incredibly Machiavellian take, on par with Alex Karp justifying the building of SkyNet/1984 because we can't lose our global leadership position.
ajross
The "checks notes" thing is a marker that you're about to argue with a straw man. Don't do that here, please.
The root cause of the terrible stuff you (and I) cite, is that the US has terrible power. Cheney used a little of that power to do terrible things, as did Kissinger. But notably neither attempted to create a circumstance where the ultimate authority over the use of that power rested anywhere other than with the American electorate. When it turned out that Americans wanted to do something different, they walked out the door and handed over the keys, peacefully and happily.
Things can go much, much worse. And in particular we're currently looking at a regime that seems decidedly unwilling to hand over the keys.
hitarpetar
just so you know this means you are pro-Cheney. the untold human suffering caused by those wars was in service of the system you are glad he didn't "blow up"
random9749832
When I was younger I used to make the mistake that others had the same bit of humanity as me even if it wasn't obvious, that it must of existed somewhere within them. Then I learnt to accept that some people just suck and there isn't anything you can do about it. The only thing you can do is distance yourself from them.
ajross
If you must reduce the argument so far, then sure.
Khan and Caesar brought peace to millions. Life is complicated. But some worlds are worse than others, and Dick Cheney's actions sit solidly in the middle of the pack. They're part of the universe of discourse and action that the rest of us can live with and recover from. Not all leaders fit that mold.
"Just so you know", as it were.
nine_zeros
[dead]
gadders
His daughter Liz is keeping the love for war going.
fatbird
His daughter Liz left the MAGA Republican party long before it was obvious they'd return to power, and actively opposed them at great political cost.
It's strange to watch someone you'd otherwise be against with every fibre of your being, do something principled you agree with.
roenxi
We can be thankful he lived to see the Cheney family being evicted from the Republican party in humiliating style; in no small part because of how ruinous his policies were for the right wing's strategic position. An unfortunate trend in history is a lot of these sort of people never have to confront how disastrous their legacy was. If there was an expectation that they have to see consequences of their failures in their own lifetime maybe that'd spur some standards that more ephemeral concepts of legacy do not.
ngetchell
I don't think his legacy was the reason him or his daughter were kicked out of the Republican party.
It was solely due to speaking out against Trump.
ecshafer
A not insignificant reason for the rise of Trump were the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which Cheney is directly responsible for.
zitsarethecure
Odd that so few folks supposedly opposed to those wars appear to be speaking out against war with Venezuela.
paulryanrogers
War profiteering seems like a plank of the Republican party both pre-Trump and within the Trump era.
dekken_
You're positive there are zero democrats with no financial stake in defense contractors?
To me it seems an issue of individuals, rather than "parties".
paulryanrogers
Something being a party plank does not mean every member of other parties must oppose it.
That said, there is one party that is consistently hawk-ish and boasts about war spending. And there is another party which most often campaigns on reducing war spending.
null
draw_down
[dead]
epolanski
> "In our nation's 248 year-history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump
And yet, the same person has advocated and pushed for greater powers to the presidency increasing the risks of such individual threats.
It's no coincidence that in the list of countries in the last 50 years that drifted from democracies to authoritarianism the tier of those that succeeded (the likes of Russia, Belarus, Nicaragua, Philippines, Turkey) are ALL presidential republics.
Poland, Hungary, India, Israel, while not being shy of power hungry smart individuals? None of them is a presidential republic. The play in such countries is the party-state identification, where the party takes control of key institutions, press and in the right situation can also grab more. But it's never as simple or easy as in presidential republics.
In fact, I think that Sri Lanka is the last fully parliamentary democracy to shit into full authoritarianism, and that happened almost 50 years ago.
I can't but wonder whether US citizens realize that the constitution is dated, written for different times and with much less experience and lessons to learn from other democracies. It shows all the cracks of presidential democracies:
- constitutions where 2 or more branches of government can claim public mandate through elections (in US case president + congress) which unavoidably clash, for no greater good.
- hard to impeach/remove branch. Say what you want about many democracies in Europe for changing governments frequently, but you're always one single majority vote away from having to resign.
- cult of personality. Presidential republics, by electing an individual instead of a parliament/coalition are much more prone to personality cults.
US has all of those ingredients and Cheney made sure to make these problems worse.
OrvalWintermute
VP Cheney’s extremely troubling wars in the Middle East and civilian death counts of between 146,000 and >700,000 should be a permanent stain on his legacy.
the_real_cher
His company Haliburton also was the supplier for the Vietnam war.
The quintessential example of the military industrial complex.
philipwhiuk
And a big piece of Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster, for which they largely escaped criticism.
the_real_cher
It just gets worse and worse
yawpitch
Vaya con dios, Dick… vaya con dios.
null
Widely regarded as the most powerful US vice president, in terms of operational authority and policymaking control. He may be one of the people most responsible for the expansion of executive branch authority in place now. Nobody is more responsible for the post 9/11 loss of civil liberties. In comparison most other VPs, including the current one, have been ceremonial. Cheney almost made Bush 2 ceremonial.