.:Biography

Richard Bruce Cheney (born January 30, 1941), widely known as Dick Cheney, is an American politician and businessman affiliated with the Republican Party. As of June, 2005, he is Vice President of the United States. Cheney is also the former CEO of Halliburton, former U.S. Representative from Wyoming and a former Secretary of Defense.

Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney serves as Vice President of the United States with the George W. Bush administration. Previously he served as Secretary of Defense with the George H.W. Bush administration, and as White House Chief of Staff under Gerald R. Ford. From 1978 to 1989, he served as a U.S. Representative from Wyoming.
A neo-conservative and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Cheney is the former CEO of Halliburton Company, which greatly benefits from contracts with the U.S. government, especially in the war with Iraq. Cheney has ties to the Carlyle Group, is a former Senior Fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, served on the Advisory Board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), and has been linked to the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
Mr. Cheney opposed the Equal Rights Amendment, is an anti-abortion advocate, and supports prayer in school. While serving in Congress, he was one of 21 members opposing the sale ban of armor-piercing bullets; was one of only four to oppose the ban on guns that can get through metal detectors; opposed sanctions against the apartheid-era South Africa in the mid-1980s along with voting against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela; voted for a constitutional amendment to ban school busing; voted against Head Start; and voted against extending the Clean Water Act in 1987.
Mr. Cheney is still drawing a $1,000,000 per year paycheck from Halliburton while serving as the Vice President. He evidently sees no conflict of interest between taking this paycheck, and participating in White House decisions that have allocated billions of dollars of bids to Halliburton that have not gone to open tender.
His persistent embroglio in the Junior Bush regime has been with his Energy Task Force through which, during the early months of 2001, he was taking dictation from Enron and studying petro maps of Iraq. All of the notes from these meetings have been kept secret.
Cheney has been perhaps the most influential Vice President in history. During his 2001-2004 term with GeorgeR W. Bush, he has:

• championed DonalRd Rumsfeld for Defense Secretary
• "over fierce objections by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell", insisted "on placing Paul Wolfowitz in the number two position at the Pentagon"
• "insisted, again over Powell's misgivings, on making ultra-unilateralist John Bolton, then vice-president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), undersecretary of state for arms control and international security."
• "reportedly played a key role in the appointment of another controversial neo-conservative, Elliott Abrams, to head the Middle East office on the National Security Council."
• "reportedly visited the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) several times in the run-up to the war in Iraq, in what was seen as pressure on CIA analysts to take a darker view of Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to al Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction."

Cheney's staff, headed by extremist Lewis Scooter Libby, had a major hand in [pre-]writing Colin Powell's February 2003 speech to the United Nations.

Cheney was patron of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans.
Note: In honor of Big Business Day 2003, Citizen Works presented Dick Cheney the "Daddy Warbucks" Award for eminence in corporate war profiteering on Friday, April 4.
Cheney's wife, Lynne Cheney, is a senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute. When not lecturing at college campuses about moral values, she occasionally discusses her seamy 1981 lesbian romance novel, Sisters, when she isn't suing to keep the smut from being reissued. Cheney's daughter, Mary Cheney, left her job as gay liasion for the anti-gay, far-right Coors (see Joseph Coors) company to work for the 2000 Bush/Cheney campaign. Both father and daughter spoke of inclusiveness within the Republican Party. Cheney himself said that the issue of legally recognizing same-sex relationships should be left up to the states. Republicans netted 25% of the GLBT vote as a result. In 2004, with Republicans no longer wanting or needing such a "degenerate" voter base, Cheney happily endorsed the sweeping and draconian Federal Marriage Amendment. No longer being valuable political-capital, Mary was kept far in the shadows (despite this, she still worked for her father's 2004 campaign). The gay Republican organization Log Cabin Republicans ran TV ads in various swing states during spring and summer 2004 to remind voters of Cheney's 2000 statement (see quotation below).
On February 11, 2006, Cheney accidentally shot his friend, Harry Whittington, while hunting quail at a ranch owned by Katherine Armstrong. (link to Washington Post.)