ABSTRACT

United States (US) president George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq alarmed many who had served in the Vietnam War or who had reported on it as journalists. In 1990, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Richard Cheney, then secretary of defense in Bush’s administration, created an interagency group to articulate the political and military mission of the US in the post-cold war world. The group, which included Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy secretary of defense for policy, Cheney’s aide Lewis Libby, and Zalmay Khalilzad, then on the National Security Council (NSC) staff, delivered its recommendations in February 1992 as a draft of the annual Defense Planning Guidance. In the view of many in the administration, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein serves two purposes. First, it eliminates one rogue state with nuclear ambitions and deters the rest by sending a powerful message about US power and resolve. Second, it changes the balance of forces in the Middle East.