Speaking before the Defense Policy Advisory Board on September 19, 2001, Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi “suggested that the United States avoid the distraction of an attack on Afghanistan in favor of going for Iraq right away. Touting a scheme he had been advocating since 1993, he explained how armed insurgents under his command could easily overcome Saddam’s threadbare military–so long as he had the protection of U.S. airpower and Special Forces advisers. There would be no postwar guerrilla resistance and a government could be easily and quickly set in place. The end result, he asserted with practiced fluency, would undoubtedly be a stable, free-market, and democratic Iraq, a reliable U.S. ally.”
– Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld, Page 150