Timeline
January 26, 1998
Project for a New American Century sends a letter to President Clinton calling for "the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power." It is signed by Elliott Abrams, Richard Armitage, William Bennett, John Bolton, Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, Kristol, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.
June 23, 1998
At a "Collateral Damage Conference" hosted by the Cato Institute, Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney says, "The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is."
August 7, 1998
Al Qaeda bombs US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 220 people and injuring more than 4,000.
October 31, 1998
President Clinton signs the Iraq Liberation Act, drafted by Trent Lott and others - with an assist by Ahmed Chalabi - and passed by Congress almost unanimously. The act makes it the policy of the United States "to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime." The Act also designates $97 million in military aid for Iraqi opposition groups, nearly all of which is earmarked for Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress.
Late 1998
General Anthony Zinni, commander of US combat forces in the Middle East, is given a copy of Chalabi's plan to topple Saddam. "It got me pretty angry," he will later tell Jane Mayer of The New Yorker. "They were saying if you put a thousand troops on the ground Saddam's regime will collapse, they won't fight. I said, 'I fly over them every day, and they shoot at us. We hit them, and they shoot at us again. No way a thousand forces would end it.' The exile group was giving them inaccurate intelligence. Their scheme was ridiculous." He warns Congress that Chalabi's plan is "pie in the sky, a fairy tale."