In an interview with Bob Woodward at the Washington Post, the Maestro clarifies what is perhaps the most explosive line in his new book: “The Iraq War is largely about oil.”
Greenspan tells Woodward that this wasn’t the Administration’s motive, but his own view of the situation. And he says he made that point to the White House privately in 2003:
“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.”
He said that in his discussions with President Bush and Vice President Cheney, “I have never heard them basically say, ‘We’ve got to protect the oil supplies of the world,’ but that would have been my motive.” Greenspan said that he made his economic argument to White House officials and that one lower-level official, whom he declined to identify, told him, “Well, unfortunately, we can’t talk about oil.” Asked if he had made his point to Cheney specifically, Greenspan said yes, then added, “I talked to everybody about that.”
Greenspan said he had backed Hussein’s ouster, either through war or covert action. “I wasn’t arguing for war per se,” he said. But “to take [Hussein] out, in my judgment, it was something important for the West to do and essential, but I never saw Plan B” — an alternative to war.
Meanwhile, behind the pay wall over at the NYT, Paul Krugman amplifies, with far more data, the point that struck me in reading coverage of the book on Saturday: Why didn’t Alan Greenspan tell us all of this stuff sooner, when it might have made a difference?
UPDATE: Over at The Curious Capitalist, our fellow TIME blogger Justin Fox offers this as one possible answer to my question:
I think it’s because Greenspan is an astute politician who didn’t want to ruin his relationship with an increasingly popular president. Greenspan’s explanation in the book is that he naively misunderstood how the press and Congress would selectively construe his carefully balanced statements about taxes and the budget. This seems a bit rich. Although I guess if you believe that line from the acknowledgments, where Greenspan says “I had always viewed myself as an observer of events, never as part of them,” then maybe he really didn’t understand the impact he could have.
