Washington DC - Dick Cheney, celebrated as a master Republican strategist but defined by the darkest chapters of America's "War on Terror," was honored Thursday in a funeral attended by Washington's elite that pointedly left out President Donald Trump.

Cheney's career reads like a catalogue of American statecraft, even as his long shadow over controversial foreign policy – as defense secretary during the Gulf War and the 46th vice president under George W. Bush – still divides the country.

Bush and fellow former President Joe Biden were among more than 1,000 guests at Washington National Cathedral. But Trump, who hasn't commented on Cheney's death, and Vice President JD Vance were not invited.

The Neo-Gothic Episcopal church, veiled in muted autumn gloom and fortified by tight security, set a tone of quiet gravity as a Who's Who of luminaries gathered beneath its vaulted stone arches.

"Colleagues from every chapter of his career will tell you that he lifted the standards of those around him, just by being who he was: so focused and so capable," Bush told the congregation.

"In our years in office together – on the quiet days and on the hardest ones – he was everything a president should expect in his second-in-command."

Every living former vice president – Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, Al Gore, and Dan Quayle – was in attendance, along with generals, foreign dignitaries, and Supreme Court justices.

Cheney's daughter Liz – famously ousted from the congressional Republican Party over her opposition to Trump – spoke movingly about connecting with her father in his final years, watching sports and old movies, and hitting the road together.

"We drove for hours. We talked about life and family history and America," she said.

Flags across states were lowered to half-staff after his death on November 3.

But looming over every tribute was the darker side of his legacy: the expansion of executive power, the "War on Terror," and the debate over America's use of torture.

Cheney was a key advocate for the 2003 invasion of Iraq – famously stating that "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction" – a conviction that haunted him after the intelligence behind the claim unraveled.

He championed sweeping surveillance powers under the Patriot Act and defended controversial "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

Later in life, he emerged as a critic of his own party's populist drift. A vocal detractor of Trump, whom he called a "threat to our republic," he even endorsed Harris, the president's Democratic election rival in 2024.

Trump's absence reflected the ideological rifts that divided Washington during Cheney's final years, and the demise of the bipartisanship valued by the oldest generation of power-brokers.

The president has been silent on Cheney's death, though his press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was "aware" of his passing.

Responding to past criticism, Trump once described Cheney as an "irrelevant RINO" and a "king of endless, nonsensical wars, wasting lives and trillions of dollars."