Posted here Saturday, April 03, 2004 at 12:22:46 PM 
not only was saddham without WMD, the admin implies he was on the path. But an alternative view is that he was growing wweaker by the day and meretime would have solved the problem.
http://www.constellationsjournal.org/Semmler-Nell.pdf
His army had been reduced to more or less half its previous size;his conventional weaponry had become out of date; his missiles had been used up and not replaced; most of whatever arsenal of mass destruction he had was destroyed. And it was clear that the regime was not popular: in the North, the Kurds were in more or less open revolt; while in the South, the Shi’ite majority had long resented its exclusion from power. In short, before the invasion of Iraq, Saddam appeared to be weaker and less dangerous than ever.
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Moreover, it emerged that Saudi money had financed both the Taliban and al Qaeda. And, of course, Bin Laden himself – and his money – came from within the Saudi establishment, close to the royal family. The world’s largest oil producer, sitting on the world’s largest and most easily tapped pool of reserves, could no longer be trusted to remain loyal and cooperative. The US depends on Saudi Arabia – and on Iraq – for imported oil. The Texas oilmen who figure so prominently in the administration are unlikely to opt for conservation and improved energy efficiency. What to do? Well, Saddam’s weakness, together with his belligerence and general unpopularity, offered an opportunity. To understand just what this opportunity meant, we need to look at the importing of oil by the industrial countries (US and OECD Europe), together with the annual production of oil, as well as the remaining oil resources by region. The picture that emerges will provide clues to the administration’s actions.
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This table (click on article to see) underlines a major geopolitical problem: on the one hand, the reserves of the advanced economies are rapidly shrinking and thus overexploited; on the other hand, those of the Middle East are both much larger and significantly underexploited.
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... In other words, as we have argued above, if this war ‘is not’ about oil, the discussion should be about oil. Control of oil, not weapons of mass destruction, is the real long-run issue, not only for the West, but for the rest of the world as well. Basically, the world has one chance to make the transition from an industrial civilization fuelled by fossils to one based on renewable energy.
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