Dick Cheney dies at 84: What was the former U.S. vice-president’s cause of death?
It has been announced that Dick Cheney, who served as U.S. vice-president during the 2000s, has died.
Dick Cheney, a U.S. politician who served as Republican vice-president under George W. Bush, has died at the age of 84, it has been confirmed.
“His beloved wife of 61 years, Lynne, his daughters, Liz and Mary, and other family members were with him as he passed‚” Cheney’s family said in a statement shared with media outlets early on Tuesday.
“The former Vice President died due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease.”
Key architect of “War on Terror”
Cheney was the U.S.’s vice-president throughout Bush’s two terms as president, between January 2001 and January 2009. He played a key role in the “War on Terror”: America’s response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Notably, Cheney was a driving force behind the controversial 2003 invasion of Iraq, which led to the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Led by the U.S., alongside a ‘coalition of the willing’ that included the U.K., the invasion failed to gain United Nations approval. However, it went ahead nonetheless, based on faulty intelligence that Saddam was stockpiling so-called “weapons of mass destruction”.
Chief of staff under Ford
A native of Nebraska, Cheney also served under other Republican administrations. He was the White House’s chief of staff under President Gerald Ford between 1975 and 1977, and, under President George H.W. Bush, was the U.S.’s secretary of defense from 1989 to 1993.
Cheney also spent a decade as the House representative for Wyoming’s at-large district, having been elected to Congress in 1978.
Long battle with heart issues
Cheney endured cardiac-health issues throughout his adult life: he suffered a total of five heart attacks between 1978, when he was just 37, and 2010.
In 2012, aged 71, Cheney underwent a heart transplant. Speaking to Stanford Medicine’s Paul Costello two years later, he said: “It’s the gift of life itself... After you’ve been through all of the procedures and so forth and then anticipating death and finding your life has been extended that it’s miraculous…
“You have a sense that after you’ve been through all of that, everything else is small.”
In 2013, Cheney and his chief cardiologist, Jonathan Reiner, wrote Heart: An American Medical Odyssey.
According to its authors, the book “chronicle[s] the former vice president’s thirty-five-year battle with heart disease, providing insight into the incredible technological and medical breakthroughs that have change cardiac care for millions of patients across the world."
A daughter in Congress
Cheney is survived by wife Lynne, whom he married in 1964, and daughters Liz, born in 1966, and Mary, born in 1969. Cheney’s older daughter also served in Congress, representing Wyoming’s at-large congressional district in the House between 2017 and 2023.
Cheney is also survived by seven grandchildren.
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