After Operation Desert Storm, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney was in favor of leaving Saddam Hussein in power, as it wasn’t worth the risk to remove him. In an interview with author Stephen Hayes on August 22, 2006, Cheney, serving as Vice President, explained why Saddam was now worth removing: ” ‘I think that after 9/11 when you move to a situation where your biggest threat is the possibility of terrorists, state-sponsored terrorists, or a terrorist with a relationship with a rogue government able to get their hands on deadly technologies, Saddam Hussein is a hell of a problem. And he was a problem before 9/11, but he became a bigger problem after 9/11 in the light of that threat that we’re living with still to this day, the possibility of an al Qaeda cell in the middle of one of our cities with a deadly biological agent or a nuclear weapon.’ ”
– Stephen F. Hayes, Cheney, Page 393