Dick Cheney turned the vice presidency from a punch line into a powerhouse. Having been a right-hand man to multiple Republican presidents before running with George W. Bush in 2000, he knew his worth. When a former veep, Dan Quayle, warned him the job mostly involved attending openings and funerals, Cheney replied, “I have a different understanding with the president.” A proponent of a strong executive branch, he rejected the idea that protecting civil liberties outweighed the imperative to prevent another 9/11. Instead, he became the architect of the War on Terror, crafting and promoting the administration’s rationale for invading Iraq in 2003. That conflict, in which nearly 5,000 U.S. service members and some 200,000 Iraqi civilians were killed, grew increasingly unpopular once it bec

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