[rmnunez]

911 was just another excuse for attacking Saddam, and the fact he sat atop a third of the world's oil reserves and that the US is/was and anticipated remaining a major importer, would be a major consideration.

The US has previously attacked other countries without provocation or justification. It emerged as an imperial power to rival Britain by an unprovoked attack on Spain in Cuba and has maintained a practice of unprovoked attack ever since.

But the US doesn't attack just anyone without provocation, it picks its targets with care and in pursuit of foreign policy objectives. These objectives include (some say excessively emphasize) access to markets and natural resources around the world. Oil and the geographic points through which it passes to reach western markets provides justification for concern over a genocide ruling for decades smack-dab in the middle of the world's most important reseves.

As I've noted before, besides the repressive nature of his regime, Saddam was dangerous, attacked neighbors, dabbled in nukes, chemical as well as biological weapons and did have some terrorist connections, though not directly with the 911 attack. These would add excuses or justifications for intervention against Saddam.

I think all of these were duly considered when Bush contemplated intervention, I read into his contemporaneous statements feints at possible justifications before settling on WMDs. I suspect this was because it was then felt the threat of such weapons coupled with fears of terrorism from other Muslims, made intervention seem reasonable and appropriate.

Promoting intervention based on need to assure access to oil would have been a much harder sale. Likewise over concern for the ethnic repression or due to expressed concern from neighboring states. United statians would not volunteer substantial forces and resources at serious risk to solve other people's problems, but something less explicit than "oil greed" needs to sugarcoat the pill -WMDs did the trick.