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Alan Greenspan: Iraq War For Oil

“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,”

Greenspan and black oil.

Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006, Alan Greenspan was the doyen brain of America’s economy for two decades.

Writing for the Times Online, Graham Paterson previews an obvious truth coming out in Alan Greenspan’s memoir tomorrow:

AMERICA’s elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.

In his long-awaited memoir, to be published tomorrow, Greenspan, a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, will also deliver a stinging critique of President George W Bush’s economic policies.

However, it is his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion that is likely to provoke the most controversy. “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” he says.

Greenspan, 81, is understood to believe that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the security of oil supplies in the Middle East.

Britain and America have always insisted the war had nothing to do with oil. Bush said the aim was to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and end Saddam’s support for terrorism.

(Just in case anyone hadn’t made the connection yet)