On March 22, 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news briefing: ” ‘Our goal is to defend the American people, and to eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and to liberate the Iraqi people.’ ” Additionally, ” ‘Military forces also will ‘secure Iraq’s oil fields and resources, which belong to the Iraqi people, and which they will need to develop their country after decades of neglect by the Iraqi regime.’ ”
– Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt, “Rumsfeld Says Iraq is Collapsing, Lists 8 Objectives of War,” The New York Times, March 22, 2003