The former US vice president played a crucial role in planning and overseeing the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein
Former US Vice President Dick Cheney has died from complications of pneumonia and heart and vascular disease, his family said in a statement on Tuesday.
Serving under former US President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009, Cheney was one of the chief architects of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. He strongly advocated the claim that then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, which was later discredited. Cheney also pushed for the broader ‘war on terror’, approved the use of torture on terrorist suspects, and greenlighted the warrantless monitoring of Americans’ phone calls and emails.
He left office with one of the lowest approval ratings ever recorded for a US vice president, according to major US pollsters, but expressed no regrets over his policy choices, insisting he did what was necessary after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 2,800 people.
“I would do it again in a minute,” he said in 2014, responding to a Senate report that condemned the CIA’s interrogation methods as brutal, ineffective, and damaging to America’s global standing.
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