Why Saddam Hussein was removed:

“[Tight oil] markets have increased US and global vulnerability to disruption and provided adversaries undue potential influence over the price of oil. Iraq has become a key ’swing’ producer, posing a difficult situation for the US government … Iraq remains a de-stabilizing influence to … the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export programme to manipulate oil markets.”  [my emphasis added]

- “Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For the 21st Century, ” Report of an Independent Task Force, Sponsored by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy of Rice University and the Council on Foreign Relations. April, 2001.

www.bakerinstitute.org/Pubs/studies/bipp_study_15/bippstudy15.html

(The Baker Institute is headed by James A. Baker, III, Secretary
of State under President George H.W. Bush).


The perceived key reason for staying there and building, from America’s perspective (GOP OR Democrats):

“The reason the United States has a legitimate and critical interest in seeing that Persian Gulf oil continues to flow copiously and relatively cheaply is simply that the global economy built over the last 50 years rests on a foundation of inexpensive, plentiful oil, and if that foundation were removed, the global economy would collapse.”

- Kenneth Pollack, former Clinton advisor, ”Foreign Affairs” magazine, July / August 2003, pp. 2-4.