The other thing is casualties

The Los Angeles Times noted of the Iraq Survey Group report in 2004:

Saddam and his aides were convinced that their chemical and biological weapons saved the Baath party regime after a U.S.-led military coalition forced Iraqi troops out of Kuwait in 1991. U.S. and allied troops halted their advance deep in southern Iraq...

Saddam and his aides told interrogators they thought Bush left him in power because U.S. officials knew of his orders to load and disperse his nerve gases and germ agents, and his orders that the weapons were to be used if U.S. troops entered Baghdad.

Reconsider now this 1994 interview in which Dick Cheney defended the decision to terminate the military advance. With modern-day occupation of Iraq a bloody disaster, a scene of crime, attention focused on the obvious: "Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? ... It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq."

A lot of people are asking what changed?, yet too few people seem to provide a coherent answer. Saddam's lethal arsenal of chemical and biological weapons were an equal if not more persuasive reason not to press on; an implicit factor in evaluating potential human death. Might this be what Cheney had in mind when he added:

The other thing is casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact that we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had ... 146 American's dead ... and the question for the president in terms of whether we went on to Baghdad ... was how many additional dead Americans was Saddam worth?

Enter the United Nations Special Commission. It certainly made sense for troops to withdraw as disarmament experts moved forward, taking into consideration former weapon inspector Scott Ritter's view that

disarmament was only useful insofar as it facilitated regime change. And that's what people need to understand, that this was not about getting rid of weapons that threatened international peace and security. This has been about, since 1991, solving a domestic political embarrassment. And that is the continued survival of Saddam Hussein, a man who in March 1990 was labeled as a true friend of the American people and then in October 1990 in a dramatic flip-flop was called the Middle East equivalent of Adolf Hitler.

Attacking Iran - fine. Repression of the Iraqi civilian population - we can live with it. Annexing the oil fiefdom of Kuwait - unacceptable. Someone call a locksmith!

Iraq appeared ripe for regime change. The weapons, formerly an obstacle to achieving that goal, were long gone. As former British Secretary of State Robin Cook pointed out when he resigned his cabinet position in 2003, "it is only because Iraq's military forces are so weak that we can even contemplate its invasion." If true, Cheney dare not admit it. To do so would endanger his liberty.