As vice president, he crafted response to Sept. Il attacks

The firm-jawed former secretary of Defense was unapologetic backer of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

-  James Oliphant and James Gerstenzang

DAVID HUME KENNERLY Getty Image POWERFUL ADVISOR The chief strategist for President George W. Bush, Cheney redrew the lines that defined the vice presidency.

Richard B. Cheney, the former vice president of the United States who was the architect of the nation's longest war as he plotted President George W. Bush's thunderous global response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has died.

Vexed by heart trouble for much of his adult life, Cheney died Monday night from complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according to a statement from his family. He was 84.

"For decades, Dick Cheney served our nation, including as White House Chief of Staff, Wyoming's Congressman, Secretary of Defense, and Vice President of the United States," the statement said. "Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing. We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man." To supporters and detractors alike, Cheney was widely viewed as the engine that drove the Bush White House. His two-term tenure capped a lifetime of public service, both in Congress and on behalf of four Republican presidents.

It often fell to Cheney, not Bush, to make an assertive, unapologetic case for the American-led wars in AIghanistan and Iraq and for the controversial antiterrorism measures such as the Guantánamo Bay prison. And after the election of President Obama, it was once again Cheney, not Bush, who stood among the new president's fiercest critics on national security.

In an October 2009 speech one emblematic of the role he embraced after leaving the White House Cheney blasted the Obama administration for opening an investigation of "enhanced" interrogations of terrorism suspects during the Bush years.