No War for Oil

Tigerhawk argues that we have pretty clear proof that the US did not topple Saddam Hussein for the oil:

I never thought the claim that we invaded Iraq "for oil" made sense for the obvious reason that the straightest path to the oil would have been to cut a deal with Saddam Hussein. We were essentially at war with Iraq all along, flying 10,000 sorties a year to police the war zones and strangling it with economic sanctions so tight that the NGOs claimed that the West was "responsible" for tens or hundreds of thousands of excess deaths a year from economic deprivation. If the point was to "get" the oil for American companies, why not trade the lifting of American sanctions for drilling concessions? Well, a wealthy Texas oilman is on trial right now for acting on precisely that idea. He had a close relationship with Saddam Hussein, and tried to influence the United States government against attacking Iraq:

Read the whole thing.

Via Instapundit