Originally Posted by Wikipedia

The terrorist attacks of 9-11 proved to be a radical turning point in administration policy as Wolfowitz later explained “9/11 really was a wake up call and that if we take proper advantage of this opportunity to prevent the future terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction that it will have been an extremely valuable wake up call.”[18] He went on to clarify that "if we say our only problem was to respond to 9/11, and we wait until somebody hits us with nuclear weapons before we take that kind of threat seriously, we will have made a very big mistake." In the first emergency meeting of the U.S. National Security Council on the day of the attacks Rumsfeld asked “Why shouldn’t we go against Iraq, not just al-Qaeda?” with Wolfowitz adding that Iraq was a “brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily - it was doable” and according to Kampfner “from that moment on, he and Wolfowitz used every available opportunity to press the case”. The idea was initially rejected, mainly at the behest of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell but according to Kampfner “Undeterred Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz held secret meetings about opening up a second front – against Saddam. Powell was excluded.” Out of this came the creation of what would later be dubbed the Bush Doctrine, centering on pre-emption and American unilateralism, as well as the war on Iraq which the PNAC advocated in their earlier letters but first there was Afghanistan to deal with.