Dick Cheney, a driving force behind the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, was considered by presidential historians as one of the most powerful vice presidents in United States history.

He died at the age of 84 on Monday from complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, his family said in a statement on Tuesday.

The Republican - a former Wyoming congressman and secretary of defense - was already a major Washington DC player when then-Texas governor George W Bush chose him to be his running mate in the 2000 presidential race that Bush went on to win.

As vice president from 2001 to 2009, Cheney fought vigorously for an expansion of the power of the presidency, having felt that it had been eroding since the Watergate scandal that drove his one-time boss Richard Nixon from office

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