Counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke recalled his meetings at the White House on September 12, 2001: ” ‘Later in the day, Secretary [of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld complained that there were no decent targets for bombing in Afghanistan and that we should consider bombing Iraq, which, he said, had better targets. At first, I thought Rumsfeld was joking. But he was serious and the President [Bush] did not reject out of hand the idea of attacking Iraq. Instead, he noted that what we needed to do with Iraq was to change the government, not just hit it with more cruise missiles, as Rumsfeld had implied.’ ”
– James Bamford, A Pretext for War, Pages 285-286