Former US Vice President Dick Cheney has died

Former US Republican politician and former Vice President Dick Cheney has died. He was 84 at the time of his death, his family confirmed in a statement.

A Yale University dropout and a veteran of the Vietnam War, Cheney became one of the most influential figures in US politics during a four-decade political career. He served as a White House adviser under Richard Nixon, the youngest chief of staff under Gerald Ford, a congressman under Ronald Reagan, Secretary of Defense under George H. W. Bush, and Vice President under George W. Bush.

In the 2000 election, George W. Bush chose him as his vice presidential candidate from the oil company Halliburton. When Bush was evacuated to a safe place during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Cheney effectively took over the leadership. He played a key role in policymaking along with Donald Rumsfeld, his former associate defense secretary during the Nixon-Ford era.

The most controversial decision in Cheney's political legacy was the invasion of Iraq. As defense secretary during the 1990-91 Gulf War, he successfully drove Saddam Hussein's forces out of Kuwait. But his role in the George W. Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq a decade later remains a controversial one. The allegations that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction were later proven false.

According to the Watson Institute at Brown University, at least 800,000 people have been killed directly in war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan since 2001.

Cheney remained controversial after his resignation for his stance on the torture of prisoners in the War on Terror.