March 30, 2003: Rumsfeld States Desire for Iraqi Government that is Friendly toward US

US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sends a classified paper to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Vice President Dick Cheney, and CIA Director George Tenet. In the paper, Rumsfeld says that the US should not hand over control of Iraq to the Iraqis too quickly. There should first be a guarantee that any new Iraqi government will be “friendly” to the US, he says. [Gordon and Trainor, 3/14/2006, pp. 479]