Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who pushed for Iraq invasion, dies at 84

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, an architect of the global war on terrorism and second Iraq war who served for decades in Congress and three Republican administrations, died Monday night of complications from pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, his family said in a statement

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, an architect of the global war on terrorism and second Iraq war who served for decades in Congress and three Republican administrations, died Monday night of complications from pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, his family said in a statement.

He was 84.

Cheney served as vice president for eight years under President George W. Bush and as defense secretary under his father, President George H.W. Bush. Before that, he served in the U.S. House as a Republican from Wyoming and as White House chief of staff for President Gerald Ford.

Looking at Dick Cheney's lasting impact on the Middle East04:05“Dick Cheney 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," the family statement, provided by their spokesperson Jeremy Adler, said. "We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man.”

Cheney, a forceful and polarizing figure in Washington, was a key figure in the defense and foreign policies of the two Bush administrations. A defense hawk, Cheney spearheaded two major U.S. military operations during Bush senior's tenure, including an invasion of Panama that toppled the country's leader, General Manuel Noriega, and the first Gulf War, in which a U.S.-led coalition of allied nations liberated Kuwait from Iraq after its leader Saddam Hussein's brief and widely condemned invasion of the country. Unlike the second war in Iraq, the 1991 conflict did not end in the removal of Hussein and a protracted occupation by U.S. and allied forces.