He was Secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush during Operation Desert Storm and later Vice President under his son George W. Bush during the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Dick Cheney, who died Tuesday at the age of 84, was perhaps one of the most influential and powerful vice presidents in U.S. history.
On the day of his death, many recalled that Cheney had been a sort of "chief operating officer" of President Bush Jr.
And as such, he was one of the most persistent and vocal supporters of the idea of regime change in Iraq - perhaps the most lasting, but also the darkest legacy he left behind.
"Simply put, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. "There is no doubt that he is stockpiling them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us," Cheney said in August 2002 at a conference of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
It turns out that the Iraqi president did not actually have any weapons of mass destruction, nor was he preparing to use them against anyone.
But it was these non-existent weapons that became the pretext for the war and the subsequent expensive, cumbersome and brutal occupation that opened Pandora's box of violence, displacement, terrorism and new dictatorships.
And that box has not yet been closed.
The military campaign, led by the United States and planned with Cheney's key participation, was swift and decisive. From an American perspective, it was brilliant. In less than 20 days, American and allied forces reached Baghdad.
But the occupation, for which Cheney also bore responsibility, turned into a disaster.
Just weeks after the fall of Hussein's regime in April 2003, riots began in Fallujah and Ramadi, and within months it became clear that coalition forces could not maintain order.
The failures were many - in the areas of security, governance, the economy, and even the provision of basic services. Americans found themselves in a society whose traditions and complex internal relationships they did not understand - or, as critics argued at the time, did not want to understand.
"Saddam knew who his enemies were and killed them, but the Americans have no idea who is who. And even if they do not intend to, they put us all in danger," a Baghdad businessman told CNN in 2004.
At that time, the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal also broke out. Photos of humiliated Iraqi prisoners, distributed in the media, shocked the world.
"They cursed at us, shouted at us, insulted us. If someone said something, they hit him hard - in the kidneys, in the chest, in the throat. "Our bodies were covered in bruises," one of the Abu Ghraib prisoners later recounted.
Today, Iraq is more stable and Baghdad is no longer a battlefield, but corruption remains a huge problem.
Only a few years ago, the country - with the help of the United States and its allies - managed to defeat the "Islamic State" - a jihadist group that emerged as a direct result of the American invasion and subsequent occupation.
Ironically, Iran, which under Hussein was a mortal enemy of Baghdad, today has significant influence in Iraq - also a direct consequence of the war.
In addition to the moral and human consequences, the wars that Cheney most actively pushed for have inflicted severe economic damage on the United States.
According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, conflicts have cost America $8 trillion since September 11, 2001.
The mistakes of the post-9/11 era, in which Cheney played a key role, led to the rise of the "Islamic State", to lasting instability in the Middle East, the refugee crisis, and the enormous debt of over $38 trillion that weighs on the American economy.
Yet it would be unfair to attribute all of this to Cheney alone.
After all, he was just one in a long line of American leaders who acted recklessly in the Middle East - with dire consequences for the region and for the United States itself.