The Baath Party and the Muslim Brotherhood are the two branches of fascist influence left from World War II. Since the Muslim Brotherhood merged with al Qaeda, that makes al Qaeda and the Baath party -- which still exists in Syria -- as the two non-marginal direct descendants of this malignant cause still kicking on the planet. Nor have they changed their philosophy one bit: they still despise Jews, and they still despise Americans. Unfortunately, that could also be used to describe most British, these days.

Taking out Saddam wasn't all about oil, and it wasn't all about power. It was about finishing this anti-capitalist/anti-Semitic/anti-American movement off once and for all, and in ALL of its permutations.

I, for one, am happy to have been led by a President who reacted to a malignant attack by taking out not one, but two malignant, anti-American governments. If we're going to be hated, then we may as well be feared as well.

"Many US conservatives opposed the war." If some names were mentioned, then your Leader would have some validity; it didn't and it doesn't.

The gall of these people to make such assertions from the sidelines is beyond reprehensible. GWBush is the Commander in Chief of the U.S.A., and after 9-11, it was clear that we were at war with a stateless, faceless enemy of Islamo fascists. Saddam Hussein was an Islamo fascist as much as any other, and was a threat in many ways. He admired Hitler and ran his country in much the same way. Don't give me this "secular" garbage. He was an enemy of freedom and, in particular, the U.S. While you can disagree with Bush's decisions, you can't assign YOUR wild fantasies to his motives. Note that there was NO EVIDENCE...nothing Greenspan heard or saw personally to back such a claim.....just his opinion, and it gets reported as fact. I saw 9-11, and I am not about to attack my President as he fights this war as he sees fit. Our system allows a new President every 4 years. It does not allow undermining and demonizing of the President because he makes decisions you disagree with.

I wholeheartedly agree...How can Greenspan be taken seriously? To make this ridiculous claim is to fall into bed with the looney left. If the war was about oil, then why are we paying near record levels for oil? Even the Iraqis aren't benefiting from their oil supplies completely.

Greenspan has totally blown whatever reputation he had as an independent observer. I never thought he would create such lies just to sell a few books; I figured he was set financially. He's trying to throw the election to Hillary and the Democrats in '08...

The price of crude is currently $80 per barrel.
Iraq has 115 Billion barrels of proven oil reserves.
Thats 9 Trillion dollars at todays prices.
Prices could reach $180 in the next five years five years and then the reserves would be worth $20 Trillion.

No one really thought Saddam had WMD's. The inspectors said he didn't, his son in law said he had destroyed them. Clinton bombed him every second or third day for eight years. He couldn't even get supplies to fix Iraq's destroyed water purification system. People who really knew what was going on , knew damned well that Saddam and Iraq were no threat to anyone. Just as Iran is no threat to anyone today. That will not stop Bush. Just as America had to invade the Phillipines, and overthrow the Hawaiian government., along with many others. We don't go to war because we are threatened, like Rome and Britain we conquer because we can and because we have power mad leaders. Let us hope and pray we can change before we fall, like all other greedy imperialistic nations have before us.

No, Saddam was proved to be unable to control oil, after he invaded Kuwait, and attacked Iran. He NEVER even tried. Sadly becoming so clear this Bush just does not understand what he is doing. The military accomplished its mission in 2 months. Iraq could have been built just like So Korea, but the political decisions after the victory are all wrong. Allowing looting, then expecting respect! Allowing Saddam's face to continue on currency. Failing to build infrastructure, and by the way, failing to provide fair protection for our troops. Compare this to the strategies in :"how to eat soup with a spoon"

It's about time some one of importance is telling the

truth. Most have known this for years. Bush,

is the worst President ever

Greenspan will be seen as a fairly disasterous Fed Chairman when history reflects on it. We are beginning to reap the whirlwind of his super lax monetary policies that have bred sequential bubbles and weakened the US and its currency. He did this to court his political masters. So much for the Fed's independence. But he is correct in saying that oil was a prime driver of Iraq policy and the weapons of mass destruction were an essential aid in selling the program. Greenspan may have not had anything to do with WMD but he fostered the insane growth of derivatives - aka WWD - weapons of wealth destruction Warren Buffett called them.

Anybody who says that the US went to war in Iraq to promote democracy is not a serious person. That's like saying we entered WWII to promote democracy in Germany and Japan which is exactly what these same people would have you believe. Absolute non-sense!

There obviously was no hard evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction but we went to war anyhow. It's possible that some members of Team Bush believed their own lies but the rest knew they were taking this country to war based on lies.

That leaves oil with one exception. The neo-cons, who had their own agenda, convinced Bush that he was destined to be a great war President. But to be a war President you need a war. So he started one.

Saddam's defiance because he would not give up weapons of mass destruction he did not have? Lame excuse. As for the claim that many nations opposed to war believed him to possess those weapons, that was based largely on the doctored US intelligence. The man was a dictator and a mass murderer, but I saw a trapped rat not a defiant dictator. I will concede that oil was not the only motive, but it certainly was a strong factor; so was giving billions of dollars of contracts to supporters of the administration and the projection of US power. Wars are rarely about just one thing. Let's not forget that Saddam was virtually left with no airforce after 1991 and that there were many news reports throughout the 1990s of Allied planes bombing this or that installation in Irak because they had allegedly been targeted and fired upon from the ground (no planes were ever hit). With the Allies controlling the Iraqi skies and satellite surveillance it's hard to see how Saddam posed a serious threat

You know those news clips you see once or twice at the most, then they are dumped? Here are two I think speak volumes about this war in Iraq. The first was Collen Powell during an media interview he stated "well, if you people would stop driving all those suv's out there".

Another statement that seal's the two reasons why we are there. G.W. Bush when asked why we were after Saddam "Well, he did try to kill my daddy".

You think about these two statements combined with Greenspans thoughtful statements and see where you end up.

It is clear that the US has followed the Realist model of acting in the interests of its own security. To this end both Power and Oil are key to this aim. With Us sources of oil now very low it is important that if they wish to be the dominant economic power then the US has no alternative but to pursue policies that ensure an external sourse of oil.

I'm getting quite sick of the regular meme trotted out by iraq war apologists that "even countries opposed to the war believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction" - yes, some countries did. And why? Because they made the mistake of believing the cherry-picked intelligence that had been fed to them by the United States.

Mr. Greenspan has it wrong and so do most of the so called experts and commentators. The Iraqi invasion was done for Israel and Israel alone, and has nothing to do with oil, power or any other things. It has to do only with Israel and the Jewish control of America.
One must not be afraid to say such things if we are to remain a democracy of some sort any more.
Being Jewish, Mr, Greenspan will never say that the war against Iraq was about Israel and the dominance of the American political system by Zionist and the Israeli spies.
If Israel did not exist there will never have been an invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan,never.

It is Israel l,keep a very close eye on that snake of a country,the end might just, just might come from those international terrorist that run Israel some day.

FYI Mr Greenspan is married to leftist leaning NBC news correspondent Andrea Mitchell and her fingerprints are all over this.

"but even countries opposed to the war believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction."
But even countries supporting the war did not really believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destrcuion.

What is formulated as an answer to Mr. Grrenspan's remarks about "oil the reason for war" isn't an asnwer at all.
It is about categorizing the critics of this war in a patronizing form.

After all I simply assume, that Greenspan knows a bit more than the authour of this article.

PS: Excuse my english

"Many US conservatives opposed the war."
Who? When? How (loudly)?

They barely leave his mouth and the words are spun already. He said largely, not entirely. I would say that Greenspan knows money better than you, so maybe he is right about big government spending and the need to secure oil for our own financial well being.

Saddam was dead before they even declared war, and that brings no justice.

Deceit is the "worst big government activity of all", not war.

It is war that deposes them.

it's a sickening combination of oil, power and governance.

Our nation depends on oil and a significant part of that supply comes from the Middle East. Any sensible person would acknowledge that an unstable Middle East jeopardizes the free trade of oil. So OF COURSE the stabilization of the region included the "oil factor".

While there have been (unnecessary) statements in response to the far Left's foolish accusation that we went to Iraq to steal their oil, I have not seen any official denial that the stabilization of the oil supply was not an important objective of the War in Iraq.

While his statement is true at its base, Greenspan had to have known how it would be distilled and diseminated by the media, whose only objective is to destroy Bush and return power to the Democrats.

Right or wrong, Bush's decision to engage Saddaam and world terror had the country's interests in mind. The Media's decision to undermine everything this country stands for has no such noble motivation.