OnePeople

Wolfowitz: Iraq War Was About Oil

Well, so much for those of us who thought there was more to it an that. The Guardian quotes Paul "Bombers" Wolfowitz as:

"Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,970334,00.html

Update Thu Jun 5 10:53:51 EDT 2003:
From the gulfwar-2 list:

...Guardian appears to have yanked the story - and for good reason. What Wolfowitz actually said, available via the transcript at DefenseLink, is substantively different:

"Look, the primarily difference -- to put it a little too simply -- between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq. The problems in both cases have some similarities but the solutions have got to be tailored to the circumstances which are very different."

What makes The Guardian's actions even worse is that they ran the AP
version days earlier:

"The primary difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options in Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil,'' he said."