Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney dies at 84, leaving a legacy forever tied to the Iraq War
WASHINGTON — Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the most influential and controversial figures in American politics after 9/11, died on November 3, 2025, at age 84. His death immediately reignited debate over his central role in the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, a conflict that reshaped the Middle East and left a massive human toll.
Cheney served as vice president under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009, where he championed an aggressive national-security doctrine and strongly pushed the intelligence claims used to justify the Iraq War. Supporters long argued that Cheney acted in the interest of U.S. safety in a period of global uncertainty. Critics, however, describe him as a chief architect of a disastrous war, linking his influence to a death toll that has been estimated from hundreds of thousands to, according to the broadest calculations, approaching one million when indirect deaths are included.
Exact casualty counts in Iraq remain disputed. Iraq Body Count — which documents confirmed civilian deaths — reports hundreds of thousands killed since 2003. Several population-survey studies, including those published in The Lancet and PLOS, estimated significantly higher figures. Research compiled by Brown University’s “Costs of War” project explains that the final toll is impossible to measure precisely, but may grow when accounting for indirect deaths caused by infrastructure collapse, displacement, and medical system failures during and after the invasion.
Cheney, who rarely expressed regret for the decision to invade, maintained until the end of his life that removing Saddam Hussein was the correct course. But journalists, veterans, diplomats, and scholars continue to argue over whether the war destabilized the region, strengthened extremist groups, and inflicted irreversible damage on Iraqi society.
As news of his death spread, the division over his legacy resurfaced instantly. Supporters hailed him as a defender of America during one of its most frightening eras. Opponents pointed to the enormous human suffering that followed the war he helped engineer — a legacy that may define his name for decades to come.
