White House says peace in Ukraine closer than ever before
Mar 15, 2025
The White House lowered flags to half-staff on Tuesday following the death of former Vice President Dick Cheney, Reuters reported. While leading US political figures expressed condolences over Cheney's passing, since he was regarded as "chief architect" of the Iraq War, some of his critics voiced their views because he was never tried for war crimes.
Cheney, George W. Bush's vice president, died Monday from complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, aged 84, his family said Tuesday in a statement.
Flags have been lowered to half-staff "in accordance with statutory law," Reuters reported, citing White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
George W. Bush, the president during Cheney's tenure, and many US political figures have expressed condolences over his death.
Bush offered a lengthy statement to his partner in the White House on social media platform X on Tuesday, calling Cheney's death "a loss to the nation and a sorrow to his friends."
Former president Bill Clinton, a Democrat, said: "Though we often disagreed, I always respected his dedication to our country and his unwavering sense of duty," BBC News reported.
As of press time, the Trump administration has yet to comment on Cheney's death, but the White House says Trump is "aware" of it.
"I know the president is aware of the former vice president's passing. And as you saw, flags have been lowered to half-staff in accordance with statutory law," Leavitt said on Tuesday, Reuters reported.
AP reported that years after leaving office, Cheney became a target of US President Donald Trump, especially after his daughter Liz Cheney became the leading Republican critic and examiner of Trump's desperate attempts to stay in power after his 2020 election defeat and his actions in the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
Cheney is often described as a chief architect of US' war on terror in the early 2000s and its invasion of Iraq, NPR News reported. But in Iraq, he's better remembered as a key figure behind the destruction of the country, as NPR put it.
A defense hawk, Cheney spearheaded two major US 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 US-led coalition of allied nations liberated Kuwait from Iraq after its leader Saddam Hussein's brief and widely condemned invasion of the country, per NBC News.
In addition, Cheney was a strong advocate for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and was among the most outspoken of Bush administration officials warning of the danger from Iraq's alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons were found, Reuters reported.
Upon his re-entry into politics, Cheney received a $35 million retirement package from oil services firm Halliburton, which he had run from 1995 to 2000. Halliburton became a leading government contractor during the Iraq war. Cheney's oil industry links were a subject of frequent criticism by opponents of the war, per Reuters.
Cheney's critics responded to his death on social media with criticism that he wasn't tried for war crimes, according to Newsweek on Tuesday.
Progressive commentator Mehdi Hasan wrote on X, "He should have died in The Hague."
"Every time one of these mass murderers dies without having faced any consequence for the massacres they ordered, the lives they destroyed, the societies they razed to the ground… I realize how far we are from a world with justice. Rest in hell Dick Cheney. Your legacy is death," wrote Eman Abdelhadi, a columnist for In These Times, an American politically progressive monthly magazine, as cited by Newsweek on Tuesday.
