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1044 Jonathan Landay: People talk about the -- oil being the motivation -- I'm not so sure about that. My take on that would be -- There wasn't an effort to control oil. It was an effort to ensure that nobody controlled oil -- that it remained a free-flowing commodity.

1180 Julian Borger: This sense -- that he was a primary threat to the US -- in the oil-producing Gulf region, primarily -- But also, ultimately, to US power -- to US interests elsewhere.

1854 Jim Lobe: If for no other reason that it was very clear that oil companies, or the people who were very closely associated with big oil, like James Baker, were raising all kinds of red flags about the decision to invade Iraq. I mean -- or for that matter Brent Scowcroft who was probably the most articulate and influential. I mean he represents a lot of big interests that are associated with oil, and he was very clearly opposed to the whole idea.

1862 Jim Lobe: The decision to go into Iraq was an attempt to be a kind of demonstration project, particularly to China to say, "You desperately need oil, and local sources will not give you enough oil for your development. You will have to rely on Gulf oil, and we can cut it off if absolutely necessary. So it is much better to deal with us and to take fully into account what we want than to try to challenge us, because we can really do to you and your economy immense damage if we feel that it is in our interest."

1866 Jim Lobe: This strategy of denying possible rivals energy resources has a history. We now know that plans for intervention in Saudi Arabia during most of the Cold War were not so much based on the idea of securing that oil for the United States as it was of actually destroying oil wells or capping them in ways that the Soviet Union could not use them, ever. So the sense of the denying of resources that rivals would need doesn't just date from the Gulf war.