Former Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the most powerful vice presidents in American history and a leading architect of one of the most catastrophic U.S. foreign policy decisions, the invasion of Iraq, died Monday. He was 84.
“His beloved wife of 61 years, Lynne, his daughters, Liz and Mary, and other family members were with him as he passed,” his family wrote in a statement. “The former vice president died due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease.”
Cheney’s five-decade career made him one of the most experienced and influential figures in modern American politics. Before serving as George W. Bush’s vice president from 2001 to 2009, he was Secretary of Defense under President George H. W. Bush (1989 to 1993), a congressman from Wyoming for ten years, and White House Chief of Staff under Gerald Ford.
But it was his tenure as vice president that cemented him as one of the most consequential and controversial U.S. officials of modern times. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Cheney helped shape the Bush administration’s response: promoting the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, a claim that was later discredited. He also championed the expansion of executive power, the use of torture and the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay.
Supporters saw him as a steady hand in crisis; critics viewed him as a symbol of American overreach and moral compromise.
Bush, Cheney’s former boss, in a statement, called him “a calm and steady presence in the White House amid great national challenges. I counted on him for his honest, forthright counsel, and he never failed to give his best. He held to his convictions and prioritized the freedom and security of the American people. For those two terms in office, and throughout his remarkable career, Dick Cheney’s service always reflected credit on the country he loved.”
Former President Joe Biden, who earlier succeeded Cheney as vice president under Barack Obama, added: “Guided by a strong set of conservative values, Dick Cheney devoted his life to public service — from representing Wyoming in Congress, to serving as Secretary of Defense, and later as Vice President of the United States. While we didn’t agree on much, he believed, as I do, that family is the beginning, middle, and end.”
Others were more harsh. Matt Duss, a former adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, wrote on X that “Dick Cheney was the author of immeasurable human suffering and an architect of American decline. He left our country, and our world, a crueler and more lawless place. He escaped accountability in life; he shouldn’t in death.”
Journalist Mehdi Hasan, in a piece for Zeteo, criticized what he called the whitewashing of Cheney’s legacy: “It is difficult to quantify just how many people are dead because of Cheney. Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? The legacy media won’t tell us. They will likely engage in hagiography when it comes to covering his death because that is what the legacy media does when the powerful pass away. Reputations are laundered; careers are whitewashed; crimes are ignored.”
Some conservatives had also turned against Cheney in recent years. As Donald Trump’s movement repudiated the neoconservatism Cheney embodied, the former vice president broke with his party, denouncing Trump and endorsing Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. Some Trump-aligned voices, like far-right podcast host Alex Jones and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, were critical of the former Vice President following the news of his death.
Former GOP Congressman George Santos, recently granted clemency by Trump, added, “Dick Cheney will meet his maker and will have lots of explaining to do. I wish his family well all things considered, but I haven’t and won’t ever shed a tear for a war criminal of his ilk.”
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