Dick Cheney is an easy man to hate. Afghanistan to Iraq and wiretaps to Valerie Plame, the former US vice-president has been chewed up for everything we hate about the Bush presidency. Cheney took the mortar fire, while others slipped into the shadows. Few tears were shed when Bush-Cheney left Washington amid financial calamity and two wars. Democrats may be secretly thanking him for their historic victory in 2008.

Nearly three years later, Cheney, one of the most powerful vice-presidents the US has seen?so powerful, he was often seen as the real power behind the George Bush throne?has spoken out. Make no mistake: In My Time, the former US vice-president?s memoir, is no attempt at self-exculpation. Rather, it is a stout, unapologetic defence of Cheney?s convictions and the actions that led from it.

During the horror and panic of 9/11, when he led operations from a White House bunker, Cheney commanded that a plane full of passengers and not responding to landing orders be shot down. Mercifully, it wasn?t, because the order was not fully transmitted upwards. Cheney held fort in the fog of war, airlifting Congress members, clearing skies, and getting fighter planes to patrol airspace as America reeled under the attack. As he watched hijacked planes crash into the WTC and Pentagon?where he had served as defence secretary earlier?Cheney?s resolve to kill the terrorists in their caves grew.

Having followed the Vietnam War, worked through the Cold War and led the first Gulf War, Cheney was the first to recognise that 9/11 was a different kind of war, requiring a different kind of response. Terrorists recognised no borders and struck at will. He was one of the architects of the Bush Doctrine, which placed terrorists and their sponsors on the same level, opening a wide global canvas for military exploits that bogged down American troops in messy battles in faraway lands.

Cheney was defence secretary during George HW Bush?s presidency, handpicked after a previous choice was rejected. After gassing Kurds and slaughtering Shias, Iraq had taken Kuwait. Saddam Hussein?s tanks were headed for the Saudi border. His audacity had shaken the Arab kingdoms and Cheney successfully lobbied with them to sign on to the war. It was a quick and efficient operation, sending Saddam?s forces fleeing across the border. However, as Cheney notes, not removing Saddam from power in 1991 had a long-term impact: It allowed the dictator to portray himself as the brave survivor of the US attack, much like Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. Besides, as US withdrew from the Gulf theatre, Saddam stepped up the killing of innocent civilians who had sided with the US in hopes of liberation. Allies became wary too, complicating the task of persuading them during the second Gulf War.

However, Gulf War I was just a blip compared with the wars that followed. The September 11 attacks shook the US, and the world, as the clich? goes, changed forever. Though Cheney as vice-president had few line responsibilities, it?s clear from the book that Bush took his counsel seriously most of the time. As he notes, Bush ?had a strong sense of his strengths and weaknesses?, often turning to Cheney for advice. Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld helped draft the Bush Doctrine and the Congress overwhelmingly authorised war in Afghanistan. It was a quick victory too.

Of all the decisions of the Bush presidency, the Iraq invasion was clearly the worst. Cheney quotes leading lights of the Democratic Party like Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton who were convinced of Iraq?s weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and supported war. Bill Clinton had spoken for regime change, and (faulty) intelligence reports over a period of time?dating back to the Clinton presidency?had ?confirmed? WMDs. With the Afghan war still on, America decided to open a second front in Iraq. Cheney, who had travelled the Middle East for war support in 1991, found that this time friends were few. However, when the war effort stumbled and the body bags started coming home, the chameleons changed colour and what the Congress authorised to secure the US came to be derided as the ?Bush Wars?. It is no surprise that Cheney, given his well-publicised views, continues to support the decision to go to war in Iraq. What surprises, however, is that though his commander-in-chief later expressed shock and disappointment at the absence of WMDs in Iraq, Cheney does not.

Cheney does not mask his contempt for Powell and Rice. The White House?read Cheney?was accused of vendetta in leaking the identity of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA agent whose husband Joe Wilson had gone public against the administration. Much later, Powell?s deputy Richard Armitage admitted that it was he who leaked the identity. While Armitage and Powell buried the truth, Cheney and his assistant Scooter Libby faced fire.

Cheney tears into Rice for choosing expediency over principle in non-proliferation. As she focused on getting a deal?any deal?which would allow her to claim credit. Cheney strongly felt the secret reactor North Korea was building in Syria should be taken out by the US, in order to send a strong message. Rice protested. Even after Israel bombed the reactor in the dead of the night, the state department under Rice pretended it did not know about the operation, since it felt acknowledging the action would jeopardise the six-party talks in the Korean peninsula, on which they had pegged enormous?and, as it turned out, baseless?hopes. Cheney?s fears came true later when the North Koreans took the Americans for a royal ride, breaking promises, enriching uranium, rebuilding reactors and hawking reactor technology.

Cheney clearly had a larger-than-life influence on America?s foreign and military policy all through the Bush years. Born into a middle-class family, Cheney grew up in Casper, Wyoming, and worked as a lineman stringing power lines for a while. His sojourn at Yale was not fruitful either. He would perhaps have continued as a linesman had he not been arrested for driving under the influence. The second arrest prompted him to think of his future. Cheney decided to continue with his studies and cut down on drinking.

Cheney?s breath-taking ascent from a linesman in desolate lands to being part of the most powerful office in the world makes for fascinating reading. It is yet another example of the American Dream, where talent, will and hard work can take a mechanical labourer in Wyoming to the corridors of Washington, right up to its highest office, to serve with distinction. Cheney is acutely aware of his privilege too, asserting this would happen only in the US.

In My Time is blunt and brainy with dashes of unexpected humour. The former vice-president comes across as a taciturn man of deep convictions and direct action, holding little regard for those who stood in the way. If securing America requires wars and wiretaps, then so be it. The rapid-fire writing style devoid of poesy and pretension makes it a delight to read. For any student of the Bush Doctrine and the War on Terror, memoirs from the man who led it from the policy trenches are a must-read.