Found in an old article on California's energy crisis: Why the US should invade Iran -- as of April 2001 Before 9/11, several documents made the argument to the Administration for taking over Iraq and its oil -- based on the spectre of the California energy crisis, and more to come, as explained by Enron's Kenneth Lay to the Administration -- all due to lack of control of foreign oil. Justifications were written and presented to the President for taking Iraq, to protect the US oil supply. April 2001. Read the footnotes -- this is amazing stuff, buried.

Far down in the article, which was written about how Enron manipulated the markets to wring California's energy market for vast profits, there are quotes from documents that were preparing the arguments that -- because of the lack of control of foreign oil -- the Administration should invade and take control of Iraq. EXCERPTS -- see the full article, dig down past the old news about Enron manipulating the market, to the documents described later in the text. Such as: “America must act not like a policeman but like a sheriff in the old Western frontier towns, acting alone on occasion, relying on deputies or long-standing allies, or looking for a posse among regional partners. . .[America] cannot allow desperadoes to run loose without encouraging other outlaws to test the limits of law and order.” ... ... ... the Council on Foreign Relations, advising the new president in June of 2001, “Saddam Hussein and his regime pose a growing danger to the Middle East and the United States. The regime cannot be rehabilitated. Therefore, the goal of regime replacement should remain a fundamental tenet of U.S. policy options.” The paper ... describing actions that Saddam Hussein might possibly take. If he crosses any one of the three, the report states, we will gain the support of the Arabs and the Turks against him: “First, Iraqi military threats or attacks on allied forces. Second, Iraqi threats or attacks on neighboring states. Third, Iraqi acquisition and deployment of weapons of mass destruction or their use, including nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.” ... Newt Gingrich’s address before the Hoover Board of Overseers was titled, “National Security Initiative, the Transformation of National Security,”... called for a new kind of military education. He advised dropping the “concept of exit strategies,” which he said was a “fetish that grew out of the Vietnam War.” As for Saddam Hussein, Gingrich said, “We need to immediately replace him.” ... Gingrich ...said, “You cannot change Saudi Arabia as much as we need to change Saudi Arabia until you have an Iraq which is an American ally. And you need an Iraq that’s an American ally [because] it has a larger oil reserve than Saudi Arabia does.” Gingrich unveiled how coercive a threat an American-Iraqi friendship would have over the Saudis: the bi-national friendship would destroy the Saudi’s sense of their reality that they alone are the one single source for the world’s reserve supply of oil. “The morning they see that we are that serious and we are that determined, they will negotiate with us in a very different way.” In other words, once there are two sources of cheap oil, it isn’t likely the Saudis will thumb their noses at a U.S. president’s offer to buy reserve oil at two dollars a barrel. It’s either two dollars a barrel or it’s nothing. ----- Remember how the Iraqis were going to welcome the American troops with flowers as liberators? And how ....