Exactly. The Saudis have to be factored into any discussion on this topic, and that has to include the complex relationships between the current administration, the Saudis and the Carlysle group. And has anyone mentioned the white papers and feasibility studis on planning an invasion on Iraq by the Wolfowitz/Cheney/Rumsfeld troika in the years preceding 9-11 and the Bush inauguration itself? I am not aware of Gore being a part of this. Can someone shed some light on what Gore's incentive for invading Iraq would have been other than to appease neocons? I'm drawing a blank here.
As for the oil motive, I don't see the US government's ability to control or shut down oil markets as substantive excuse for oil not being a motive. It's more complex than that. I do see, instead, the US government's complicity with international energy concerns to open up the geography of some countries to better serve those energy companies' interests as a formidable motive to compliment the other excuses for invading Iraq.
Before the collapse of Enron, there was a great deal of serious fluff and flurry within it's corporate walls dedicated to several projects designed to build and operate pipelines to transport everything from oil in the former Soviet states to liquified natural gas, running from north of India, thru India across Pakistan and Afghanistan, and then underwater and around Iran if access thru Iran wasn't feasible, thru Iraq and coming back out at Jordan or Syria. Numerous variations on the possibilities and probabilities of which countries would be cooperative or not were drawn up, all dependant on current geopolitical status and updated weekly (e.g., "Project Dolphin" was one such development project.) I don't think we have to draw pictures to illustrate how many Enron execs (as well as other energy company execs, e.g., Chevron) were/are connected to players or *are* front row players of the Bush administration. The corporate concerns are not always about "the oil" per se, but expand to a far deeper and wider goal of capitalizing off of the energy sector as a whole, inclusive of oil, gas, lng and transporting services. Iraq stands as a pivot point for many energy concerns, and that cannot be dismissed so easily.
=====