No it didn't. Saddam would have sold it just as he always had.
That could ruin the world economy, and thus our own. Having Saddam in control of that resource was unacceptable. There was a clear American interest at stake, unlike say Kosovo or Libya.
Yeah, that was the pitch. What really took Saddam down was that he threatened to trade oil in Euros.
In any case, even if you don’t agree with that, we were in a state of war, rightly or wrongly, and had been for 12 years when W acted.
My point was not to the legality of the war but to the point of the article, which ignored what conservatives would call a legitimate cause for war. There's a difference you know.
But prior to intervening the Carter Doctrine was modified by the Powell Doctrine, which establishes the criteria that should be met before intervening. So using the Powell doctrine we could intervene in Kuwait but because of the Powell Doctrine, US forces could not go on to Iraq and remove Saddam.
Later in the GHW Bush the Wolfowitz Doctrine emerged(leaked), named after Paul Wolfowitz who then served as Defense Undersecretary for Policy and he would become Deputy SecDef under Bush.
The Wolfowitz Doctrine would later be called the NeoCon Doctrine or the Bush Doctrine and it was used to invade Iraq and remove Saddam.