Greenspan Clarifies the "War for Oil" Remarks

It seems that every few moments there's a new revelation critical of the Bush Administration coming from Alan Greenspan's new book. Over the weekend the big news was "the war in Iraq was about oil!!!!!" As I explained in this post, of course it was and what's wrong with that?

Today Greenspan decided to clarify what he was getting at in the book and suddenly the hype over the weekend is looking a little silly:

Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said in an interview that the removal of Saddam Hussein had been "essential" to secure world oil supplies, a point he emphasized to the White House in private conversations before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Greenspan, who was the country's top voice on monetary policy at the time Bush decided to go to war in Iraq, has refrained from extensive public comment on it until now, but he made the striking comment in a new memoir out today that "the Iraq War is largely about oil." In the interview, he clarified that sentence in his 531-page book, saying that while securing global oil supplies was "not the administration's motive," he had presented the White House with the case for why removing Hussein was important for the global economy.

"I was not saying that that's the administration's motive," Greenspan said in an interview Saturday, "I'm just saying that if somebody asked me, 'Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?' I would say it was essential."

As we know from many past occasions, the fastest way to promote your new book is to be critical of Bush, and Greenspan certainly seems to have given the press plenty of reason to run with that, but I have a feeling some of those criticisms of his former boss will be blunted as he goes on the road to promote the book. I think the oil comment and subsequent uproar were a little embarrassing to him, and he may want to walk back some of the other comments as well.