Dear Friends and Comrades,

Former Vice President Richard Cheney has died at 84 years old. The news broke on a historic election day where many expect to see Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim and a democratic socialist, elected Mayor of New York City. Cheney and his allies were responsible for the lawless executive power of US politics and policy following September 11, 2001 that led to the death of millions in Afghanistan and Iraq, ballooned the profits of military contractors, permitted torture and extralegal domestic spying on Arab and Muslim Americans and disregarded international law in every respect–a permission structure happily accepted by Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, Vladimir Putin, and the like the world over. Whatever regrets he might have expressed on the eve of Trump’s return to power, the horrors of our present moment count Dick Cheney as an author.

That his death comes on the eve of Mamdani’s presumed victory serves as a reminder of how far the forces of resistance that first gathered in opposition to George W. Bush and Cheney’s wars have come, and how far we have to go. Mamdani’s campaign has shown that a politics of justice and accountability in the face of creeping authoritarianism at home and genocide abroad can win. 

At MERIP, we think the best way to mark this occasion is to provide an overview of our coverage of Cheney’s role in the Bush administration. We’ve provided below some highlights from our archive about the American role in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and torture at black sites and Guantánamo Bay. We hope you find it illuminating to revisit this coverage, which remains free to read to all, without paywalls. 

In Solidarity,

James Ryan
Executive Director

MER Issue 227, Summer 2003
Our issue in the wake of the invasion of Iraq looked squarely at the chaos that had already begun to unfold after the collapse of the Ba’th regime.

MER Issue 228, Fall 2003
Our Fall 2003 issue focused on the plight of Iraqis under US occupation, and included special reports from the ground – including Iraqi novelist Sinan Antoon on his return to the country for the first time in over a decade.

MER Issue 232 Fall 2004
A year and a half into the occupation of Iraq, MERIP took aim at the struggles of the US’s haphazard political reconstruction project in Iraq, and provided a searing indictment of the 9/11 commission’s initial findings that absolved the Bush administration of its failures. 

Fareed Mohamaedi and Yahya Sadowski, MER 220 Fall 2001
Published two days after September 11, this overview of the trajectory of US power in the Middle East foregrounded much of what was to come under Bush and Cheney.

MER 229 Winter 2003
In opening our Winter 2003 issue, our editors highlighted the oil politics at the heart of the push for war in Iraq.

Raad Alkadiri and Fareed Mohamedi, MER 224 Fall 2002
In the run-up to the Iraq war, this article focused on the consolidating neoconservative position in favor of the invasion.

Faleh Jabar, MER 225 Winter 2002

In this article, Faleh Jabar, Director of the Iraq Institute for Strategic Studies in Beirut, looked at the case of the Taliban’s removal in Afghanistan as a dark precursor for the fate of Iraq.

Jim Lobe MER 234 Spring 2005
For our Spring 2005 issue Jim Lobe overviewed the influence of neo-conservative war hawks in Bush’s first term, and the prospects for deepening their relationship with the administration at the start of the second Bush administration.

Lisa Hajjar 
Over the years, Lisa Hajjar has provided MERIP with in-depth coverage of the torture regime installed by Cheney and the Bush administration. Her reports from 2003 and on into the Obama administration detail the intense suffering of marginalized victims of the War on Terror, and the criminality at the heart of the Bush-Cheney consensus.