Dick Cheney, Former Vice President and Architect of Iraq War, Dies at 84

Dick Cheney, who served as vice president under George W. Bush and was one of the most influential and polarizing figures in modern American government, died Monday night at the age of 84. His family said the cause was complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according to NBC News and PBS NewsHour.

Cheney’s career moved between Congress, the White House and the private sector. He was a Republican member of the U.S. House from Wyoming, White House chief of staff to President Gerald Ford starting at age 34, and defense secretary under President George H.W. Bush, where he oversaw the invasion of Panama and the first Iraq war, PBS reported.

As vice president for eight years under Bush, he played a central role in the response to the Sept. 11 attacks and in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. NBC described him as a defense hawk and an architect of the Iraq war. He argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, which were never found, and predicted American troops would be welcomed as liberators. U.S. forces remained in Iraq for about eight years, PBS reported. Cheney remained unapologetic, calling the decisions “exactly the right decisions,” PBS said.

He also defended the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, on terrorism suspects. A 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report concluded that the techniques produced no significant intelligence, PBS noted.

In his later years, Cheney broke with much of his party. He became a fierce critic of Donald Trump, calling him a greater threat to the republic than anyone, and he voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in 2024, PBS reported. He supported his daughter Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, when she criticized Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump dismissed Cheney as a “Republican in name only.”

Cheney’s health was a long-running story, PBS noted, and his family attributed his death to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease.

Former President Bush called Cheney “a calm and steady presence in the White House amid great national challenges,” PBS reported.