As the power behind the throne in the Bush-Cheney administration, the vice president was responsible for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, CIA kidnappings and torture and illegal mass surveillance of the American population.

Dick Cheney is dead. The American people will now be subjected to the predictable deluge of tributes for the former vice president from the political establishment and the corporate media. Every effort will be made to sanitize the record of a war criminal and enemy of democratic rights who helped paved the way for the dictatorial actions of Donald Trump.

No one should be taken in by the official whitewashing of the blood on Cheney’s hands. He was a man who personified the greed and ruthlessness of the American capitalist elite, serving as White House chief of staff, secretary of defense, CEO of the giant oilfield services company Halliburton and then vice president for George W. Bush where he acted as the power behind the throne. Cheney played leading roles in three major imperialist wars, against Iraq in 1990-91, Afghanistan from 2001 on and Iraq again from 2003 on. The death toll in these wars alone comes to several million, to say nothing of “lesser” conflicts, such as the 1989 US invasion of Panama and the 1992 intervention in Somalia.