Was it just for oil?

A post on the Dilbert Blog tempted me to put my thoughts in order, just to be sure what I was thinking:

Was Iraq invaded just for oil? No is the simple answer, yes is the other simple answer. Iraq was invaded to maintain a secure Western military presence, or in a more generous phrasing, to maintain regional stability. Now the reason this region is important, above say the forgotten parts of Africa, is because of its economic power, which is derived from oil. The West did not invade Iraq to make sure we had lots of oil, it feared that it wold lose control of the middle eastern economy, which would seriously damage the US economy in particular.

A long time ago the West was happy with Saddam, sure he killed and tortured, but hey, he was our friend! We even sent Donald Rumsfeld over there to sell supplies to create WMD. Unfortunately, like so many ill judged affairs it went a little wrong, Saddam got a little ahead of himself and invaded Kuwait, thinking his friends in Washington would be OK with this. So to keep him in order the US parked their tanks on their other friends lawn, the Saudi's, and told Saddam to watch himself. Pretty quickly this became untenable, for a number of reasons. Saddam along with a few other oil producers were thinking of moving their oil trades out of Dollars and in to Euros, not good for the US. These oil producing countries were also considering brokering exclusive deals with China, in urgent need of energy, something the West did not want to lose control of. For the record, the US engineered clauses in the new Iraqi constitution which give it tight control over the future of Iraq, in particular ensuring that Iraqi assets (oil) must not be nationalised, and therefore can be controlled by US companies. Finally another small problem arose, radical Islam. There were many Muslims who were offended by the sight of US weaponary on the holy lands of Saudi Arabia, and they started kicking up a fuss. One such Muslim was call Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi who was also a former friend of the US, but that was then. These radical Muslims were attacking US targets and threatening to overthrow the Saudi princes, which if it succeeded could cause Saudi money to leave the US economy at a devastating rate.

For some time many in the US had publicly pondered how to solve these dilemmas, how could an overthrow of Saddam Hussain be orchestrated without raising too much objection, then...