Following a speech at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Washington, on August 14, 1992, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney defended not removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq in Operation Desert Storm. He said: ” ‘…we made the decision not to go on to Baghdad because that was never part of our objective. It wasn’t what the country signed up for, it wasn’t what the Congress signed up for, it wasn’t what the coalition was put together to do. We stopped our military operations when we’d achieved our objective–when we’d liberated Kuwait and we’d destroyed most of his offensive capability–his capacity to threaten his neighbors. And no matter what he may say today, he knows full well that he lost two-thirds of his army, about half of his air force, most of his weapons of mass destruction, a lot of his productive capability. His military forces were decimated, and while he can try to regroup and reorganize now, he does not at present constitute a threat to his neighbors.’ ”
– Stephen F. Hayes, Cheney, Pages 249-250