[Bardan the Slayer]

It's not about "getting" the oil, and even if it was - why buy it from a madman when you can get it at knockdown price from a friendly government you installed.

But that's not what it is about. It's about control. Saddam is a nutter, and the US, UK and, well, nobody wants one of the world's biggest oil reserves to be under the control of a lunatic who could do anything at any time, including pump millions of barrels of it into the Gulf.

War for oil is not stuipd - it makes fantastic economic sense in the long term. The problem is, when you say that oil is a motive, people assume you mean Bush sneaking in there with a 50-million gallon bucket and siphoning the stuff off, before nipping back to the USA. That is *not* what's happening. The USA hasn't gone there to steal the oil, and neiather have we. Oil is a factor, but we're interested in sorting out it's long-term stability, not hiding a few billion barrels of it under our jackets and making off into the night.