Funeral held for former US vice president, Iraq War architect Dick Cheney

In honor of the passing of vice president Dick Cheney, who passed away on November 3, a bipartisan group of former US presidents and officials gathered at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.

Cheney, a powerful figure in Republican politics, served from 2001 to 2009 under George W. Bush. He passed away at the age of 84.

He is best remembered for leading the invasion of Iraq and developing important laws during the so-called “war on terror,” some of which resulted in human rights violations.

A number of senior officials sat down in the pews on Thursday to pay their respects.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, former Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Joe Biden, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and former Vice President Kamala Harris among them.

Trump himself and the current vice president, JD Vance, reportedly weren’t invited.

Bush, Cheney’s former boss, addressed a tribute to the vice president for his legacy.

When a man of this caliber has been your colleague and friend, it should be valued, Bush said in his remarks.

We are appreciative of his good deed, we honor his sacrifice, and we appoint someone to meet him once more.

Cheney’s pivotal role in the advancement of the war in Iraq was poorly made in the depressing memorial’s few words, which made no mention of it.

When Cheney became president of the United States at the age of 34, he was born in Nebraska and raised in Wyoming. He would later serve as George H. W. Bush’s defense secretary and spend ten years in the House of Representatives.

However, his legacy would be decided during the Bush presidency, which was earlier.

Cheney used the vice presidency to advance a broad perspective of executive power following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US.

He also refuted the myth that Iraq was using “weapons of mass destruction” to justify US invasion of that nation.

In the name of national security, he frequently defended measures like torture, detention without due process, and domestic surveillance.

Criticism of Bush and Cheney’s administration cite the Middle East’s instability as the cause of the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

The Afghan conflict lasted for two decades before coming to an end in 2021 after the Iraq War ended in 2011.

432, 000 civilians were killed in the fighting, out of 940, 000 direct deaths in the Middle East as a result. In addition to the conflict, millions more died from untreated diseases and a lack of healthcare facilities.

Despite allegations by human rights experts that he oversaw a torture campaign against US prisoners, Cheney has largely refuted his role as vice president.

When questioned about his support for “enhanced interrogation techniques” like waterboarding in 2014, he said they were not at all torture.

Cheney continued, “do it again,” and referred to those who conducted the interrogations as “heroes.”

Cheney had largely lost favor with the Republican Party in spite of his status as one of the most significant vice presidents to have taken office in US history over the previous 15 years.

He became even more distant from political figures when he launched a sharp criticism of Trump, calling him a “threat to our republic” at the moment.

For instance, Cheney criticised Trump’s attempts to stifle Biden’s 2020 presidential election success.

Cheney backed Trump’s re-election campaign in 2024 with Democrat Vice President Harris.

His daughter Liz Cheney was one of two Republicans on a congressional committee investigating the Trump-led assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, which was led by Trump’s supporters in protest of his 2020 defeat.

In a primary challenge to a candidate who supported Trump, she was ultimately removed from her seat in the House of Representatives. In the 2020 presidential election, she later ran alongside Harris.

In her remarks at his funeral on Thursday, Liz said, “To be in my dad’s company was to know safety, love, laughter, and kindness.

Source: Aljazeera