TEHRAN – Former U.S. Vice President Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney, the hawkish neoconservative who wove ruthless ambition and doctrine into the military-industrial complex—catalyzing endless wars that profited from carnage and fattened corporate coffers—died Monday at 84.

His family announced the passing Tuesday, citing complications from chronic heart problems and pneumonia.

Cheney’s death comes at a moment of renewed global conflict, with wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East, and it has reignited debate over a career that left deep marks on U.S. foreign and domestic policy. To critics, he was a war criminal whose decisions scarred generations and enriched corporate allies.

Born in 1941 in Lincoln, Nebraska, Cheney embodied the consummate Washington insider. He rose through Republican ranks as White House chief of staff under Gerald Ford, defense secretary under George H.W. Bush, and CEO of Halliburton before becoming vice president in 2001. His reputation for secrecy and hardline maneuvering earned him the label “the worst Dick since Nixon” from detractors.

His influence reached its zenith on September 11, 2001. From the White House bunker, Cheney directed emergency responses, later claiming President George W. Bush had authorized scrambling fighter jets.

The 9/11 Commission, however, found his shoot-down order for hijacked planes came too late—after the Pentagon was struck and the Twin Towers had collapsed. Cheney admitted authorizing it for United Flight 93, initially believing the military had downed the plane rather than passengers forcing it to crash in Pennsylvania.

The investigation itself drew criticism: Cheney and Bush testified jointly, off-record, and without oaths, fueling suspicions of evasion.

In the tense months that followed, the post‑9/11 sweep brought pre‑emptive interventions, expanded surveillance, and a readiness to authorize clandestine operations.

Subsequent investigative reporting and congressional inquiries exposed detention and interrogation programs that many legal experts deemed abusive—findings that became a central moral and legal indictment of the administration’s record.

No legacy looms larger than the Iraq War. On August 26, 2002, Cheney told the Veterans of Foreign Wars: “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”

The claim, later branded “Cheney’s Biggest Lie,” helped propel the 2003 invasion. International law scholars deemed it a war of aggression; no such weapons were ever found.

The toll was staggering. Brown University’s Costs of War project estimates nearly 929,000 direct deaths across post‑9/11 conflicts, with millions more indirect from displacement, disease, and infrastructure collapse.

Financially, the war enriched Cheney’s old firm. Halliburton, where he still drew deferred pay, secured $39.5 billion in Iraq contracts, many awarded without competition. Cheney personally benefited from stock options and bonuses, blurring the line between public service and private profit.  

At home, his imprint was equally controversial. In 2005, he championed the so‑called “Cheney Loophole” in the Energy Policy Act, exempting fracking fluids from the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The measure fueled a natural gas boom, but critics warned that it imperiled groundwater, increased methane emissions, and may have triggered earthquakes.

Cheney staunchly defended the CIA’s use of torture—euphemistically labeled “enhanced interrogation”—including waterboarding. Coupled with warrantless surveillance under the PATRIOT Act, these measures came to symbolize the administration’s sweeping executive overreach.

Rumors of darker operations persisted. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported in 2009 that Cheney oversaw a CIA “assassination ring” targeting suspected militants without oversight.

International condemnation followed him into retirement. In 2012, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission convicted Cheney and Bush in absentia for crimes against peace, humanity, and torture. That same year, he canceled a Toronto speech amid fears of arrest under Canadian law.

By the end of the Bush presidency, Cheney’s approval rating had fallen to below 20 percent, and many critics cast him as the embodiment of secrecy, profiteering, and unchecked power.

As tributes and denunciations now collide, Cheney’s death reopens old wounds. In an era of precision strikes and hybrid wars, his legacy forces a reckoning: when the architects of endless war retire to comfort, who tallies the graves of the forgotten?