Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney has died at the age of 84. Ex-President George W Bush calls it “a loss to the nation and a sorrow to his friends.” Cheney, VP under President Bush from 2001 to 2009, died from complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease on Monday night, his family say.

“Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honour, love, kindness, and fly fishing,” they added. Cheney served as President Gerald Ford’s White House chief of staff in the 1970s, and spent a decade in the House of Representatives, before becoming defence secretary in 1989.

As vice-president, he was a key architect of the “war on terror” after the 9/11 attacks, and an early advocate of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Cheney later became a bitter critic of the Republican Party under President Donald Trump, and will also be remembered for accidentally shooting a friend during a 2006 hunting trip.