On January 30, 2001, President George W. Bush addressed the sole items on the agenda for his first high-level national security team meeting: “three key objectives: Get rid of Saddam Hussein, end American involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and rearrange the dominoes in the Middle East. …The centerpiece of their recommendations was the removal of Saddam Hussein as the first step in remaking the Middle East in a region friendly, instead of hostile, to Israel. …As part of their ‘grand strategy,’ they recommended that once Iraq was conquered and Saddam Hussein overthrown, he should be replaced by a puppet leader friendly to Israel.”
– James Bamford, A Pretext for War, Pages 260-262