Timeline
March 7, 1992
The New York Times publishes portions of a high-level Defense Department policy paper written by Paul Wolfowitz and his assistants and intended for top Pentagon officials, including Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. Called the "Defense Planning Guidance for the Fiscal Years 1994-1999," the paper argues that while the United States cannot correct every wrong in the world, it must correct those that threaten US interests and the interests of US allies. It says, "Various types of US interests may be involved in such instances: access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, [and] threats to US citizens from terrorism or regional or local conflict."
April 9, 1992
A military court in Jordan convicts Ahmed Chalabi in absentia for embezzling money from a Jordanian bank he mismanaged into collapse. He is sentenced to 22 years in prison.
August 14, 1992
Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, speaking to the Discovery Institute in Seattle, says the first President Bush was right not to invade Baghdad: "The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."