In the first meeting of the National Security Council on January 30, 2001, CIA Director George Tenet “mentioned that the CIA had received intelligence assessments that Saddam was paying rewards to the families of some suicide bombers on the West Bank and Gaza. He was also selling underpriced oil to Jordan and Syria, creating a web of interdependency and support among neighboring countries. ‘We need to know more about this,’ [President] Bush said, ‘and also his destructive weapons.’ Over the next minutes, speculative, nonspecific talk volleyed across the table about how to remedy inadequate intelligence, discover the nature of Saddam’s weapons program, and bomb selected Iraqi targets.”
– Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty, Pages 74-75