Face of the Day

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. He was 84.

“His beloved wife of 61 years, Lynne, his daughters, Liz and Mary, and other family members were with him as he passed,” the family said, adding that he died due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease.

“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 added.

“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.”

The 46th vice president, who served alongside Republican President George W Bush for two terms between 2001 and 2009, was for decades a towering and polarising Washington power player. In his final years, however, Cheney, still a hardline conservative, nevertheless became largely ostracised from his party over his intense criticism of President Donald Trump whom he branded a “coward” and the greatest-ever threat to the republic.

RNZ