To follow up heerison's GHW Bush quote, here's another quote that comes straight from the dubya administration's mouth. I post this mainly b/c it puts the administration's current spin into context.
Wolfowitz: "there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two. ... The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it."DOD Transcript