WASHINGTON — Dick Cheney, the hard-charging conservative who became one of the most powerful and polarizing vice presidents in U.S. history and a leading advocate for the invasion of Iraq, has died at 84.

George W. Bush’s vice president died Monday from complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, his family said Tuesday in a statement.

In Cheney’s hands, the vice presidency became a nexus of influence and manipulation — no longer the timid office whose occupants had tended their boss’s ambitions, gone to endless banquets and often waited in the wings for their own shot at the prize.

When he bunkered in secure undisclosed locations after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, that was less an inconvenience for Cheney than a metaphor for a life of power that he exercised to maximum

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