In January 1998, Wolfowitz joined other neoconservatives in signing a letter to Clinton arguing that "containment" of Saddam had failed and asserting that "removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power ... needs to become the aim of American foreign policy." In a prescient note, the letter said, "American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the U.N. Security Council."

Cheney had been charged with developing a policy on homeland security in response to asymmetric threats, which meant that Iraq's continued possession of WMDs was a problem that landed on his desk. In morning intelligence briefings, says a former Administration official, the Vice President began to raise questions about Saddam's regime.

Cheney and others, says the official, would say things like, "Tell me about Iraq, tell me about Iraq, tell me about Iraq. What's the status of their WMDs? What's their support of terrorism?" When senior members of the intelligence community answered that they had little new information on Iraq--no smoking guns on WMDs or terrorism--the message would come back: "Try harder. Need to know more." In an interview with the New Yorker in May 2001, Cheney in two sentences linked North Korea, Iran and Iraq--the three countries that were later immortalized as the "axis of evil"--as threats to American security. Cheney still didn't buy into the whole neoconservative analysis.