WHEN DID THE WAR START?

Previously, I had shown the agenda of Bush's second National Security Council meeting, taken from the files associated with The Price of Loyalty by Ron Suskind. Iraq was the main substantive topic. Here's how Suskind described the first meeting:

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On the afternoon of January 30, ten days after his inauguration as the forty-third president, George W. Bush met with the principals of his National Security Council for the first time.

Bush offered a few introductory remarks about “the structure of things in my NSC.” “Condi will run these meetings. I’ll be seeing all of you regularly, but I want you to debate things out here and then Condi will report to me. She’s my national security advisor.”

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He turned to Rice. “So, Condi, what are we going to talk about today? What’s on the agenda?”
“How Iraq is destabilizing the region, Mr. President,” Rice said, in what several observers understood was a scripted exchange. She noted that Iraq might be the key to reshaping the entire region.


Now, from Woodward's Plan of Attack, we see that Cheney was pushing the Iraq issue even before Bush was inaugurated:

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In early January 2001, before George W. Bush was inaugurated, Vice President-elect Cheney passed a message to the outgoing secretary of defense, William S. Cohen, a moderate Republican who served in the Democratic Clinton administration.

"We really need to get the president-elect briefed up on some things," Cheney said, adding that he wanted a serious "discussion about Iraq and different options." The president-elect should not be given the routine, canned, round-the-world tour normally given incoming presidents. Topic A should be Iraq.