In early July 2002, Director of Policy Planning for the State Department, Richard Haass, met with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to discuss his concerns about a possible invasion of Iraq. “Rice immediately cut him off. ‘Save your breath,’ she told him, in Haass’s recollection [in an interview with author Elisabeth Bumiller on October 19, 2006]. ‘The president [Bush] has made up his mind.’ …In retrospect, he said, ‘I think things were pretty far along [in planning an invasion], that they had in their own minds pretty well decided to go to war unless something fundamentally changed.’ ” [The 5th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]
– Elisabeth Bumiller, Condoleezza Rice: An American Life, Page 185