00:00The U.S. flag atop the White House flies at half-staff,
00:03a tribute to former Vice President Dick Cheney, who died Monday, aged 84.
00:07He is widely seen as one of the most powerful vice presidents in U.S. history,
00:12and one with a still-visible legacy.
00:15Cheney had a long career in government, serving as a White House chief of staff,
00:19a U.S. House lawmaker, and defense secretary under different administrations.
00:23But it's his role in U.S. wars abroad that some say he'll be remembered for.
00:27His tenure as vice president stretched from 2001 to 2009,
00:32the era of President George W. Bush and the post-9-11 U.S. war on terror,
00:37which included the invasion of Iraq.
00:40In the case of Iraq, we have a regime that is busy enhancing its capabilities
00:44in the field of chemical and biological agents,
00:47and is, by all available evidence, speeding up its nuclear weapons program.
00:52Those weapons of mass destruction, the reason given for the invasion, never turned up.
00:56For this and other reasons, views of him have been split for years.
01:01I think for all those decades of in government, in Congress, and in business,
01:09he'll be remembered primarily for the 2003 Iraq War,
01:14which in one way was the pinnacle of American power,
01:18and in another way was its downfall.
01:21Because he was very much a proponent of some of the more controversial policies
01:26of, you know, the George W. Bush administration,
01:29whether you're thinking about sort of enhanced interrogations or torture, essentially,
01:35if you're thinking about sort of surveillance, the Patriot Act,
01:39or surveillance also domestic spying on Americans,
01:43and of course his most hawkish line on the war in Iraq
01:47and being largely unapologetic about it.
01:49In Cheney's home state of Wyoming, views are still mixed today.
01:56His legacy, I think, will be one of the probably better president,
02:03vice presidents that we've had.
02:05When I think of Dick Cheney, I, of course, think of the Iraq War
02:09and the war in Afghanistan and how many U.S. lives were lost and others
02:16and, you know, the failure of those efforts.
02:21While Iraqis, who bore the brunt of U.S. intervention,
02:24have largely negative views of him.
02:26I don't think any American official has a good legacy inside Iraq
02:31or that any Iraqi remembers them in a good way, especially Dick Cheney.
02:37Dick Cheney had a major role in the occupation and destruction of Iraq
02:41under the pretext of nuclear weapons, which never existed.
02:45They destroyed us, and Dick Cheney specifically destroyed us.
02:48In what way can we remember him?
02:50By the voting in the Security Council, the war, he was bloodthirsty.
02:54All I can say is that he was a bloodthirsty man.
02:58But there was more to Cheney's career than Iraq.
03:00He was also a backer of U.S. defense for Taiwan from the beginning,
03:04supporting the Taiwan Relations Act while a congressmember in 1979.
03:07As vice president, he argued forcefully for Taiwan's defense.
03:12And he visited Taiwan in retirement, even meeting President Tsai Ing-wen in 2017.
03:18And Cheney's personal politics evolved too.
03:21A staunch conservative throughout his political career,
03:24his final years saw him break ranks with his Republican Party
03:27as it came to be dominated by President Donald Trump.
03:31Cheney and Trump became strong opponents,
03:33and Cheney's daughter Liz came out as a leading anti-Trump Republican
03:37in the U.S. House of Representatives.
03:39Trump had this to say about Cheney and his family
03:42while eyeing a return to the presidency in 2022.
03:45Cheney's are diehard globalists and warmongers
03:48who have been plunging us into new conflicts for decades,
03:53spilling American blood and spending American treasure all over the world.
03:58Cheney hit back, slamming Trump in a campaign ad for his daughter Liz later that year.
04:03In our nation's 246-year history,
04:06there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.
04:11He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence
04:14to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him.
04:18In the end, Cheney went so far as to endorse Trump's Democratic opponent,
04:22Kamala Harris, in the 2024 election.
04:26Cheney's life and death chart the shifting story of U.S. policy and politics through an era.
04:31And while views of his legacy are hardly uniform,
04:34the stamp he left is something even his detractors have noted.
04:38Ryan Wu and John Van Trieste for Taiwan Plus.
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