Remembering Dick Cheney, 'Polarizing' War Criminal

Belén Fernández

Jacobin (11/5/25) offered an unsanitized review of Dick Cheney's career.

The corporate media in the United States have rarely met a servant of empire who isn’t eligible for hagiography in death, whether or not they presided over mass murder worldwide. In the case of Dick Cheney, who died on November 4, media outlets have summoned everything in their power to sugarcoat the blood-drenched career of the most powerful US vice president in history, a position he notoriously occupied for the duration of the two-term administration of George W. Bush from 2001–09.

As VP, he was chief architect of the "Global War on Terror," with a hands-on role in manufacturing the disinformation that manufactured consent for the Iraq invasion based on imaginary WMDs and fictional ties to 9/11. The hundreds of thousands of deaths from that war are Cheney's most significant legacy.

His lengthy resume also includes stints as White House chief of staff under Gerald Ford and secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush; in the latter role, he oversaw the invasion of Panama and the Gulf War, in both of which the US killed large numbers of civilians. From 1995 until 2000, Cheney served as the obscenely remunerated CEO of sketchy US oil and engineering firm Halliburton.

Chip Gibbons summed up Cheney's career in Jacobin (11/5/25):

Cheney rose to vice president as the result of a stolen election. Once in power, his attacks on democracy only worsened. Exploiting the 9/11 tragedy, he broke nearly every democratic norm to enact a regime of authoritarian, murderous policies. He not only was perhaps the single most destructive figure for American democracy in the 21st century—he left behind human carnage and death around the world.

'Towering and polarizing'

In the first six paragraphs of CNN's obituary (11/4/25), we're told that Dick Cheney was a "noble giant of a man” who was "among the finest public servants of his generation."

Needless to say, this was not how Cheney was remembered by corporate media. CNN’s obituary (11/4/25) begins:

Dick Cheney, America’s most powerful modern vice president and chief architect of the "war on terror," who helped lead the country into the ill-fated Iraq war on faulty assumptions, has died, according to a statement from his family.

Rather than dwell from the get-go on the blatant lies—pardon, “faulty assumptions”—that Cheney propagated in order to pulverize Iraq, the obituary first devotes several paragraphs to honoring him by quoting from said family statement:

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…. 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.

Love and fly fishing probably aren’t the first things that come to mind at the mention of Dick Cheney for most Iraqis, Afghans, Panamanians, Guantánamo Bay inmates tortured by the CIA, and other victims of Cheney’s “kindness.” But CNN doesn't ask them. In fact, the only major news outlet FAIR could find that interviewed someone impacted by his deadly foreign campaigns was the Associated Press (11/4/25), which found exactly what you'd imagine:

On a busy street in Baghdad, Ahmad Jabar called former Cheney a “bloodthirsty person.”

“They destroyed us,” he said of the Bush administration, “and Dick Cheney specifically destroyed us. How are we supposed to remember him?”

In the fifth paragraph of its obituary, CNN informs us that Cheney was “for decades a towering and polarizing Washington power player.” In the sixth, we have a brief eulogy courtesy of George W. Bush, who praises his former second-in-command as a “decent, honorable man” who will be remembered by “history…as among the finest public servants of his generation.”

'The truth was more complex'

New York Times (11/4/25): "Democrats portrayed Mr. Cheney...as one of the most polarizing figures in politics," but "the truth...was more complex."

Indeed, there appears to be a corporate media consensus that terms like “polarizing” and “controversial” constitute the outer limits of acceptable critique when remembering mass murderers who happened to be US statesmen. AP (11/4/25) went with the headline: “Dick Cheney, One of the Most Powerful and Polarizing Vice Presidents in US History, Dies at 84.” PBS NewsHour's (11/4/25) was: "A Look at Dick Cheney’s Influential and Polarizing Legacy."

The Wall Street Journal’s lead paragraph (11/4/25) similarly specifies that Cheney’s “role as an architect of the post-9/11 war on terror made him one of the most powerful—and controversial—US vice presidents in history.” A subsection of the New York Times’ own unbearably long obit (11/4/25) is titled “Polarizing and Idolized.”

News outlets could hardly erase Cheney's very public history of "controversy," but they bent over backwards to paint it as simply a matter of perspective. In that Times subsection, the paper's Robert McFadden explained that "Democrats" portrayed Cheney as "one of the most polarizing figures in politics, a manipulator who personified militarism, corporate corruption, government secrecy and environmental degradation." It continued:

But to Republicans who idolized him, Mr. Cheney was a fundamentalist’s rock star—a cultural and political icon, the lifeblood of the conservative movement and the president’s firm right hand. To the faithful, he was also, like Mr. Bush, a man of God.

The truth lay somewhere in between and was more complex, according to White House associates, lawmakers and others familiar with Mr. Cheney’s activities, many of which were carried out behind the scenes. Only participants in those activities got glimpses of the nuances and the leverage at work.

First of all, the real "two sides" here are not "polarizing" and "idolized"; polarizing means dividing into two opposing sides, after all. And even among typically mealy-mouthed Democrats, there were those who called Cheney the war criminal he was, not just "personified militarism."

What's more, despite the New York Times' insistence that the truth must always lie between what Democrats and Republicans say, this case above possibly all others proves that article of faith to be false. That Cheney was a rock star to conservatives does not mean he was any less a bona fide war criminal.

But media regularly pit Cheney and his supporters' views of his actions against those of "critics,” suggesting it's simply a matter of opinion whether torture in the form of simulated drowning and rectal rehydration might be a war crime.

'Helped resolve foreign problems'

CNN (11/4/25) included a photo of Cheney and his family applauding a statue of himself.

To return to CNN (11/4/25), for instance, we learn that the vice president’s “aggressive warnings” about such matters as Iraq’s—in reality nonexistent—weapons of mass destruction programs “played a huge role in laying the groundwork for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003,” which along with the war on Afghanistan “led the US down a dark legal and moral path including ‘enhanced interrogations’ of terror suspects that critics blasted as torture.”

For his part, Cheney “insisted methods like waterboarding were perfectly acceptable.” He was

also an outspoken advocate for holding terror suspects without trial at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba—a practice that critics at home and abroad branded an affront to core American values.

In response to the 2014 CIA torture report, Cheney stated: “I would do it again in a minute.”

While "critics" at least got to question what they "blasted as torture," there was no room for caveats when other brutal aspects of Cheney's brutal legacy were related. In CNN’s one-line summary of the US invasion of Panama in 1989 and Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Cheney was credited with having shown “considerable skill in directing” both assaults as Pentagon chief under Bush the elder. No mention was made of the hundreds or possibly thousands of civilian casualties of the US decision to bomb the impoverished Panama City neighborhood of El Chorrillo to such an extent that the area earned the moniker “Little Hiroshima.”

The attack on Panama is also briefly referenced in Cheney’s New York Times obituary (11/4/25), as one of the “several foreign problems” that the then–Defense secretary “helped resolve…for Mr. Bush.” The Times notes that Cheney “coordinated” the invasion of the country, “whose dictator, Gen. Manuel Noriega, was whisked away to Miami, convicted of racketeering and imprisoned.”

Again, never mind the slaughter that attended the resolution of that particular “foreign problem”—or the fact that Noriega happened to be a longtime CIA asset who had remained on the agency’s payroll. Why would any corporate media outlet take advantage of Cheney’s decades-long political history to comment on the evolution of imperial hypocrisy?

'Skillful operative'

Washington Post (11/4/25): "Mr. Cheney’s role as the Bush administration’s leading advocate of an expansive, aggressive war on terrorism reflected his conviction that the 9/11 attack was a grave threat to the United States."

As the obituaries proliferate in the establishment press, it’s hard to find a single one that isn’t complicit in sanitizing—to the extent possible—Cheney’s trajectory of mass destruction. The Washington Post (11/4/25) marks the passing of this “powerful vice president” who utilized his role as “chief strategist” during the Bush II years to “approve the use of torture and steer US occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq,” while also making significant headway in the field of domestic espionage. In the aftermath of September 11, the Post's Barton Gellman and Marc Fisher wrote, Cheney

conceived and supervised a wide-ranging new program of warrantless domestic surveillance…that circumvented legislative prohibitions and the requirements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

But it was ultimately all in a day’s work, because “to Mr. Cheney, the war on terror was a new kind of conflict demanding new rules appropriate to what he called ‘the dark side.’” Who cares that, “time and again, events would prove Mr. Cheney wrong”—as in Iraq’s lack of WMD or ties to al-Qaeda—or that he voted

against a federal holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as well as the Equal Rights Amendment, creation of the Education Department, a ban on armor-piercing bullets, and anti-apartheid sanctions on South Africa.

He also “opposed Head Start for preschool children, the Superfund program for toxic-waste cleanup, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Endangered Species Act.”

Despite all of this, Cheney remains immortalized by the Post as a “hometown hero” and “skillful operative.”

'Hard-charging conservative'

AP (11/4/25) credited Cheney with "a life of power that he exercised to maximum effect from the shadows."

Last but not least, AP 's Calvin Woodward (11/4/25) made up for his inclusion of an Iraqi voice by offering an almost endearing take on the legacy of the “hard-charging conservative,” even while reflecting on his sinister reputation:

He was the small man operating big levers as if from Oz. Machiavelli with a sardonic grin. “The Darth Vader of the administration,” as Bush described the public’s view.

No one seemed more amused at that perception than Cheney himself. “Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?” he asked. “It’s a nice way to operate, actually.”

The force was with him.

Charming, indeed.

Once again, then, the US corporate media has shown its true colors by legitimizing and euphemizing the track record of someone who is responsible for an inconceivably massive quantity of suffering and death worldwide.

As Iraqi scholar and poet Sinan Antoon recently put it: “In a different world Dick Cheney would definitely be a war criminal and would be standing trial.”

But we’re stuck with the world we have—and the media aren’t doing anything to make it any better.