The first meeting of President Bush’s National Security Council took place on January 30, 2001. “The conversation turned to Iraq, where a decade after the end of the Gulf War, American forces still enforced two no-fly zones and the United Nations program of sanctions had been terribly corrupted. As [National Security Advisor Condoleezza] Rice put it later, ‘Almost from the very beginning, Iraq was a preoccupation of the national security team.’ ”
– Peter Baker, Days of Fire, Page 91