In an article in The Casper Star-Tribune on May 26, 1996, former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney “defended the decision to leave Saddam Hussein in power in Iraq, saying again that Saddam was not worth the lives of American soldiers. He pushed to lift the sanctions on Iran–‘The good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas resources only in democratic countries friendly to the U.S.’–and warned that a failure to do so might upset the United States’ allies in Europe.”
– Stephen F. Hayes, Cheney, Page 268