The idea that that securing the oil fields of Iraq was not paramount in the minds of the White House when contemplating the invasion is simply unbelievable and flies in the face of mountains of evidence. Far from being a "lazy leftwing parking job" oil as a primary motivation for the war is very, very clear. To deny that displays a willful naivete in my opinion.

There had never been and will never be the influence of as many "oil men" in the executive branch as there were during the Bush regime. They openly and brazenly discussed the importance of securing the second largest proven oil reserves in the world before, during and after the illegal invasion. For example, did Mr. Weiss miss that Alan Greenspan openly acknowledged the war was undertaken to control the oil? To think that the control of Iraqi oil was not the primary motivation for the invasion and to say there's no convincing evidence that it was is absurd.

Oil, of course, was not the only consideration in deciding to undertake the criminal enterprise known as the Iraq war. There were numeous other factors. The bad ideas of the neocon intellectuals were only window dressing to provide an alternate rationale for the illegal invasion and occupation. All of the factors played a part in the series of horrendous decisions that brought the US to Iraq. Of all the factors influencing the horrendous decision to invade Iraq, the biggest was that we had the most incompetent and extreme people making the ultimate decision on it: Bush and Cheney supported by a whole cadre of yes men extremists and sycophants. They used everythig else in order to implement their bad decision.

George Bush wasn't the decider. The decision to go to war was made when the head of the Bush VP search team, a guy named Cheney, picked a guy not so coincidentally named Cheney to be that VP. Or perhaps when the decision was made to make Cheney the head of the search team to start with, which for all I know was suggested by Cheney.

In Jan 1998 the Project for a New American Century sent a Letter to President Clinton urging regime change via military action. Among the eighteen signers are the following names:
Elliott Abrams
Richard L. Armitage
John Bolton
Zalmay Khalilzad
Richard Perle
Donald Rumsfeld
Paul Wolfowitz
R. James Woolsey
Robert B. Zoellick

This letter followed up on the PNAC's 1997 Statement of Principles which advocated using American military force to "shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests". This statement was signed by (among other prominent neo-cons from academia and the media) these names:
Elliott Abrams
Dick Cheney
Frank Gaffney
Fred C. Ikle
Zalmay Khalilzad
I. Lewis Libby
Donald Rumsfeld
Paul Wolfowitz

From all appearances the entire Bush war-making team was assembled years in advance and inserted as a whole at the top decision making levels at the Pentagon and elsewhere by Dick Cheney when he self-selected himself as VP and so defense policy manager.

It is also interesting to see that while George W. Bush was not on the list that JEB Bush was. Which opens the interesting suggestion that as early as 1997 there was a plan to insert a Bush in the WH backed by a Cheney led military team already intent on invading or otherwise attacking Saddam's Iraq at the earliest opportunity. Due to circumstances beyond Cheney's control he seems to have ended up with the wrong Bush.

So I would agree that the war on Iraq was not directly about oil except that control of oil was a necessary element if you were planning to 'shape a new century favorable to American principles and interest'.

This isn't Tin Foil Hat territory, the links are from the PNAC website. The Statement of Principles is a straightforward argument for American hegemony and the Letter shows that the starting point was planned to be Iraq. 9/11 just facilitated a strategy and tactical plan established and PUBLISHED four years before. As far as I am concerned these two documents and their combined signatories constitute the smoking gun on Iraq.

To a large extent the Republican Party is the party of beligerence. George Bush Sr. toned down the beligerence once he was elected. George Bush Jr. just upped the beligerence upon becoming elected. Beligerence was policy. Iraq was a standard around which the Republican Party could be beligerent. Basically the goal of the Republican Party was to crush it's enemies and then wonder why. Basically if Germany has a Nazi Party Germany is going to attack Czechoslovakia. With a neo-con Republican Party in charge the US was going to broaden the war in the Mideast. I think the neo-cons are aware that neo-con poliicies haven't assisted Israel at all. It is not about Israel so much as it about war after war to achieve the New American Century. War lovers gained control of the US and Iraq was attacked. The real intersts of these people is war.

Weiss argues:
1. Most neocons are Jewish
2. Neocons are responsible for Iraq war
3. Therefore Jews are responsible for Iraq war

From Rhinoceros by Ionesco:
1. All cats are mortal
2. Socrates is mortal
3. Therefore Socrates is a cat

Exactly same arguments could (and frequently have been) made about bankers in 19-th century Europe, Soviet Communists, American liberals, alcohol retailers in pre-revolutionary Russia, you name it.

Perhaps Socrates was indeed a cat. A jewish one too...

No, anatol, Mr. Weiss never made the assertion - in his very honest, brave post - that "Jews are responsible for Iraq war". That's the kind of logical fallacy / fact-twisting that helped propel us into this nightmarish quagmire. Mr. Weiss does point out, correctly, that some Jews were responsible, just as some Gentiles were. There was, I believe, a confluence of interests that wanted an American military presence in the Middle of the Middle East - and what that "presence" entailed was a full combat-ready army, backed up by naval carrier strike forces and supply systems. That was done, and there we remain. Most Jews remain against the war, but it is a signal political component among Jews to do whatever they can to protect and sustain Israel. The Israel Lobby cannot operate without donor-supplied funds, and Jewish loyalty to Israel has been used by this front to underwrite political support for pro-war policy. To say otherwise is ridiculous and hypocritical.

Phillip Weiss is a mitzvah!

We had as much control over Saddam's oil as we do over his successor's oil or were ever likely to. W's alcoholism destroyed many brain cells, but he is not and was not ever that dumb. And what in the name of Herzl's craziest descendant is the "Israel Lobby"? Is Peace Now part of it? Or are they part of the great Communist Nazi Anti-Semitic Conspiracy to detonate simultaneous Persian nukes in Tel Aviv, Brooklyn, Peoria, and Ellesmere Island?

Good, gutsy post, Philip.
Over at the Reader Blogs, I've posted my own lengthy contribution to the debate.
Basically, I dug up a piece I wrote back in 2003, showing where the Oil and Israel Lobbies linked up on Iraq: over the chimera of cheap Iraqi oil flowing to Israel through a rebuilt Mosul-Haifa pipeline. An Israeli cabinet minister was openly talking up the plan even before Baghdad fell.
Here's a link:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/acanuck/2009/03/the-iraq-war-pipelines-and-pip.php?ref=reccafe

"Using the oil companies as a motivator strikes me as a lazy leftwing parking job."

Your version is itself a lazy parking job. Oil companies are a handy symbol, not motivator, for the value of Iraqi (and other) oil to the USA.

A rational analysis of "Why?" looks at plausible components and then subtracts them out hypothetically to see what causal role they might play in fact by how things might have been different in the fiction:

Defense of Israel is one factor. Without Israel to defend (on whatever motives), and assuming Iraq was in shambles, how would the problem have been addressed?

Oil is one factor. If Iraq didn't have oil, if Saddam had invaded Kuwait not to deal with border oil issues and a desire for added power, but simply to get oil supplies for Iraq, and had been defeated as he was, how would the problem of Iraq in shambles been addressed?

Without PNAC driving what passed for political philosophy, how would Iraq have been addressed?

Without Rumsfeld eager to try out his ideas on how to run military campaigns in the new millenium, how would...?

Without Cheney running a shadow government and shadow intelligence services, how would the public debate have been different?

And so on...

Mistaking a convenient symbol for that which it symbolizes, and then attacking the symbol, is simply silly at best, postmodern or not.

I'm going to order Juan Cole's book today. I have the typical American understanding of the Muslim world --pretty small--and admire the engagement and seriousness that Cole has brought to this issue again and again. That's why I'm addicted to his blog.

I'm wondering what I would do if one of my students turned in a report which began this way? I suspect I'd commend the student for his honesty and then proceed to suggest he read the darn book before having the gall to dissect its thesis. But then I guess Mr. Weiss has a different sense of intellectual responsibility than I do. I can't wait to read reviews of plays he never saw or concerts he never attended.

Phillip Weiss' perspective is an important one, but I do not believe there is necessarily any conflict with Professor Cole's analysis.

You see, Cheney was not really an 'oilman'. He was just made (with the help of George H. W. Bush) the CEO of Halliburton, one of the two largest US-based oilfield services corporations. Their Cayman Island subsidiary even had an office in Tehran!

Halliburton's main rival was Dresser Industries until the two merged in 1998. According to Wikipedia: "...Dick Cheney negotiated the US$7.7 billion deal, reportedly having done so during a weekend of quail-hunting. In 2001, Halliburton was forced to settle the asbestos lawsuits that it acquired as a result of purchasing Dresser, causing the company's stock price to fall by eighty percent in just over a year."

Doesn't it seem as though Dick Cheney would have had some "splainin' to do" (to borrow from Lucy)? Fortunately though (soon thereafter), Halliburton and its subsidiary KBR began making so much money in Afghanistan, Iraq etc., that Hallibuton's stock took off like a HELLFIRE® missile! I guess that 'all concerned' just decided to call it 'even-steven'.

Oh, I forgot to mention that according to Wikipedia: "...George H. W. Bush worked for the company [Dresser Industries] in several positions after the war, from 1948-1951, before he founded Zapata Corporation. His father, Prescott Bush, had been a W. A. Harriman and Company executive who had been involved in the conversion of Dresser to a public company [in 1928], and he served on the board of directors for twenty-two years."

Oh hellfire! Did I mention that according to Wikipedia: "Lynne Cheney served on Lockheed Corporation's board of directors from 1994 to 2001, a $120,000-a-year post she gave up shortly before her husband's inauguration..."

Sometimes I think that life is like a box of chocolates.....

PS. Merriam-Webster's definition of 'hellfire': "the eternal fire of hell that tortures sinners"

The Iraq War was causally overdetermined by a number of motivations at work in both the Republican Party coalition and in substantial parts of Democratic Party. It is a mistake to try to zero in on a single causal factor.

1. Oil was indeed a very large factor. The United States has long sought both secure strategic access to, and a profitable economic stake in, Middle Eastern oil. It has also sought to divide the region's oil-producing powers against one another to weaken Opec and prevent repetitions of the oil embargo. These enduring drives are long-standing, and predate our strong interest in Israel. The Iraq sanctions regime was crumbling, and US and UK firms and government interests were being outmaneuvered by foreign interests, taking advantage of our containment in a restrictive diplomatic box of our own construction. The only alternative to continued losses in the oil game would have been to drop the sanctions, offer diplomatic rehabilitation to Saddam and start dealing with him. This was seen as a humiliating prospect to a foreign policy establishment in both parties that had spent more than a decade trying to squeeze and change the Iraqi regime. It would have been viewed as a defeat for the United States. Overthrowing him was preferable to those interested in shoring up US economic interests and US prestige at the same time.

We know that even before the war was launched, meetings were held to plan the global petroleum order that would be installed following the military regime change. Cheney was very interested in this agenda, and had started the administration off with secret energy meetings and an energy plan pointing out the need for more secure sources of oil in a region with important actors who were hostile to the US in various ways. The oil ministry was sought out and secured as soon as troops got to Baghdad, even while most of the city was allowed to fall into anarchy.

2. Israel was also an important factor. The war followed several years of active lobbying and propagandizing by neoconservatives for a more aggressive posture toward the Arab world, and the centrality of Israel in neoconservative foreign policy thinking is undeniable. Neoconservative opinion leaders were among the most prominent voices in support of the war, and lobbied for it vigorously through organs like Benador Associates, PNAC, JINSA, and AEI. Many of those opinion leaders had connections to the Likud party in Israel and had been involved in crafting the Clean Break agenda for the Israeli right. Though now discredited, these folks were an extremely prominent group in the Republican Party in 2002. Bill Kristol was, back then, regarded as the preeminent message maven for the Republican Party.

It misses the point to argue in hindsight that the war empowered Iran, and so wasn't ultimately in Israel's interest. The fact is, hardly anyone was predicting that outcome in 2002. The view among the war's neoconservative backers was that the US would be able to fashion a new government in Iraq of West-leaning, modernist "secular Shiites" like Chalabi and Shahrastani, who would realign Iraq's foreign policy in a pro-US, pro-Israel direction, and lends assistance to the US's pressure campaign against the theocratic and Khomeinist regime in Iran. The reports were that Israel looked forward to action against both Iraq and Iran, but viewed Iran as a higher priority. US supporters of Israel and the war thought Iraq was a much easier target, and a good place to start.

3. Some US elites, especially on the right, were of view that the US had become an overly gentle giant that was squandering its hegemonic potential, and that far too many countries in the world had grown far too comfortable in thumbing their noses at US interests and preferences. People of this cast of mind tended to think that, apart from the specific interests that might be advanced in attacking Iraq, there was a general interest in enforcing global hegemonic discipline by "throwing some crappy country up against the wall." And another strain in neoconservative thought - and parts of liberal internationalist thought - was the belief in a "unipolar moment": a brief post-Cold War window of opportunity to expand NATO rapidly, dismantle everything that was left of the old Soviet empire, extend the American Way of Life around the globe and transform the landscape of the remaining rogues and nonaligned states so as to usher in a Pax Americana.

4. Although it is now hard to take these views seriously in light of what has been learned subsequent to the war, many beltway strategists and opinion leaders seriously believed in 2002 that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and was a major state sponsor of terror. Some even seem to have believed the seriously goofy Michael Ledeen doctrine that Iraq and Iran were part of an aligned axis of "terror masters" directing all of the world's Islamic terror from Tehran.

5. Many liberals despised Middle Eastern culture, and what was seen as its persistently undemocratic, illiberal, anti-modern, oppressive and sexist. They argued that it was necessary for the great, morally exceptional, liberal power to use its power to give these cultures a military "nudge" into a modern and liberal era. We all remember these people going weak in the knees over Bush's second inaugural address.

Why do we have to choose? There was the Likudnik crazies and their marvelous lobby, sure. There were the oil companies (let's face it -- that administration wouldn't have gone into Iraq without their tacit approval, at least). There were all the other profiteers -- KBR and Halliburton, mercenary companies like Blackwater, defense contractors eager to sell more hardware.

There were all kinds of crazy egos bouncing around -- Bush's Oedipal stuff, Cheney's paranoic stuff, Rumsfeld's... well, whatever animates that particular sociopath. And these dudes had carefully constructed an administration with no checks and balances -- all yesmen in the service of a few chiefs, and many of the underlings laughably unqualified to walk and chew gum at the same time.

War was a certainty, even before 9/11. War in the Middle East was a certainty after, and for a variety of reasons, Iraq was deemed the most convenient target.

I don't buy the notion that there was one primary culprit. There were many overlapping and intertwined agendas and influencers. None of the principals in this served a singular agenda. Advancing Israel's perceived interests vis a vis Iraq was one, but only one, of a laundry list they all embraced, to varying degrees.

"I don't think the Oedipal--war my daddy didn't have the cojones to attempt; Saddam tried to take out my dad--stuff can fully be discounted."

Your damn right it can't! Any cab driver anywhere in the world can tell you it was about oil; that's why they're cab drivers and not policy analysts -- others among us should know better.

An applicable expression in Russian: "Life is a wonderful and strange thing. But it is more strange than it is wonderful." The oil "explanation" is beginning with the conclusion and then seeking evidence to support it; kind of like that crackpot "intelligence" shop they cooked up under Rumsfeld/Feith.