Dick Cheney’s death is a national loss, says George W Bush

Former US president George W Bush led the tributes to Dick Cheney, saying his death was “a sadness to the country and a sadness to his friends”.

Cheney died from complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease on Monday night At the age of 84, his family said in a statement.

He became one of the most powerful US Vice-Presidents in history under bush, and will leave a controversial legacy in the “war on terror in Iraq.

“History will remember him as one of the greatest public servants of his generation,” Bush said in a statement.

Cheney “is a Patriot who brings integrity, high intelligence, and seriousness of purpose to every position he holds”, added Bush.

“I look up to him for his honest, practical advice, and he never fails to give his best. He puts his convictions first and puts the freedom and security of the American people first.”

CondoleEzza Rice, who served as Cheney’s Secretary of State in the Cheney administration, said she admired him “for his integrity and his love for our country”.

“He was an inspiring presence and teacher who taught me about public service,” he wrote to X.

Despite being a stalwart figure in the Republican Party for years, Cheney has become a bitter critic under the leadership of Donald Trump, who has yet to comment on his death.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said: “The scripture is very clear, we give credit where credit is due.”

“Even if there are political differences as a person later in life, you have to respect the sacrifices and service they gave to their country,” he said.

White House flags were flown at half-staff Tuesday morning, shortly after his death was announced.

In their statement announcing his death, Cheney’s family said that he was a “great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing”.

Cheney is a controversial political figure, especially for his role behind the “war on terror”, which saw the US invade Iraq in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Iraqi author Sinan Antan says Cheney’s lasting legacy to the country is “chaos and terrorism”.

“In a different world Dick Cheney would certainly be a war criminal and stand trial,” he told a new BBC programme.

Kristofer Goldsmith, a veteran of the US Army who was sent to Iraq, also told the BBC that “most people know Dick Cheney as a thousand deaths that ended in hundreds of thousands of deaths.”

Richard “Dick” Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1941 and later attended the prestigious Yale University on a scholarship but failed to graduate.

He went on to earn a master’s degree in political science from the University of Wyoming.

His first taste of Washington came in 1968, when he worked for William Steiger, a young Republican representative from Wisconsin.

Cheney became chief of staff under Gerald Ford in 1975, when he was just 34 years old, before spending a decade in the House of Representatives.

As Secretary of Defense under George Snr, he led the Pentagon in the 1990-91 GUGF War with the US expelling Iraqi troops from Kuwait.

He became George W Bush’s VP in 2001, and had a greater role in making key policy decisions than most of his predecessors.

It is for this role that he is best remembered and most controversial.

During the administration of the young Bush, he returned his duties as Vice-President from the usual Policy of the President, with a Dependent Purple in Depenta of the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001.

He was a leading proponent of US military action in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, Cheney said that Saddam Hussein’s regime had so-called weapons of mass destruction. Such weapons have never been seen during a military campaign.

He also frequently claimed that there were links between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, the terror group led by Osama bin Laden that claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. He said the attackers would incur the “full wrath” of the American military.

Cheney’s main role in the campaign will affect his political legacy, after the US took years to end a war that cost hundreds of thousands of people.

His political career later became the subject of a major film on vice-vice in 2018 – with the Christian actor in return receiving a golden globe of the former vice-president.

Cheney had many heart problems in his life.

He suffered the first of many heart attacks in 1978, when he was only 37. Cheney campaigned for a seat in the house of representatives for a day.

In 2010 he underwent surgery to install a small heart pump to try to combat “increasing congestive heart failure”.

This time he suffered five heart attacks. Two years later, Cheney had a full heart transplant.

He is survived by his wife Lynne, his daughters Liz and Mary Cheney, and seven grandchildren.

Despite decades of working for Republican presidents, he has become a bitter opponent of President Donald Trump.

Having initially endorsed him in 2016, Cheney was appalled by allegations of Russian interference in the presidential election and Trump’s seemingly casual attitude towards Nato.

He supports his older daughter, Liz, because she has become a leading Republican “before Trump” in the House of Representatives – and condemned the refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election.

Two months before the presidential election last year, Cheney raised a major intervention: announcing that he would vote for the democrats’ Kamala Harris.

He said there is “no one person who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump”.

In return, Trump called Cheney an “irrelevant Rino” – an acronym that stands for “Republican in Name Only”.

In his final years, Cheney would become persona de grata in his own party, reshaped in Trump’s image.

In a surprising final twist, his own criticism of Trump — and endorsement of Harris — will win him praise from some on the left who have criticized him in the past.