Cheney again walks Mideast high wire

It was a typical Washington muggy summer afternoon - but Dick Cheney was hardly on a routine mission.

On Sunday, Aug. 5, 1990, then-Defense Secretary Cheney, Central Command chief Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, and a handful of others prepared for takeoff at Andrews Air Force Base. Iraq had invaded Kuwait three days before. Under orders from then-President George H. W. Bush, Mr. Cheney and his group were flying to Saudi Arabia, intent on persuading Saudi leader King Fahd to accept a massive deployment of American troops to his desert kingdom.

The turmoil of the times was reflected in the fact that even as they rolled down the tarmac the US leaders were not sure whether they would be able to overcome the Saudis' traditional reluctance to allow foreign troops on their soil.

But in the past, thousands of Iraqi troops had not been massed on the Saudi border like a raised hammer. Blunt presentations from Cheney and Schwarzkopf - plus, reportedly, satellite imagery of the Iraqi buildup - convinced Fahd to accept a coalition force that eventually won the Gulf War.

Fast forward 12 years. Dick Cheney, now vice president, is setting off on another crucial mission to the Mideast.

As in 1990, this trip is fraught with tension and uncertainty. Cheney will have to deal with the tough issues of a possible effort to topple Saddam Hussein, as well as the virtual war between Israel and the Palestinians, the general fight against terrorism, and strained relations between the US and moderate Arab states.

But if any Bush administration official has the experience and standing in the region to deal with these problems, it is likely Cheney. Many leaders in the region respect him as a forthright official with close ties to the president, and as a former energy executive who served as CEO of Halliburton, the largest oil services firm in the world.

"Cheney has the credibility as an oil person, as a former secretary of Defense and as an architect of victories in the Gulf War and Afghanistan. He's not an ordinary vice president," says Raymond Tanter, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"Vice," as Bush has called him, first encountered the Mideast morass as chief of staff in the Ford Administration.

After Wyoming elected him to Congress as its sole representative in 1978, Cheney became a member of the House Intelligence Committee, where the Mideast was no small factor. In 1987, he served as ranking minority member of the House committee investigating the Iran-Contra scandal.

A year later, Bush senior plucked him from his job as House minority whip to run the Pentagon, where the military came to regard him as a hard-nosed administrator who couldn't easily be pushed around.

Cheney didn't cut off his old Desert Storm connections when he joined Halliburton. Five months after he was named CEO, he toured the Gulf states in a company jet with former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and former President Bush. The trio dined with members of the region's ruling families.

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