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C'mon Rick...read his retraction/clarification of that statement...it is HIS view that we HAD to take out Saddam to secure WORLD oil supplies from the threat he posed to them. He does not assign that motive to BUSH and in any event it is far different to go to war to SECURE strategic materials from an imminent threat than to go to war to GAIN $$ through the takeover of another country's resources. Here's his interview:

NYTimes:

Mr. Greenspan also spelled out his own views about the war in Iraq: he supported the invasion, he says, not because Saddam Hussein might have had weapons of mass destruction, but because Saddam had shown a clear desire to capture the Middle East’s oil fields. “I supported taking out Saddam, because he was moving inexorably toward taking the world’s oil resources,” he said. “Iraq was a far greater threat than Iran to the world scene.”

The Post’s Bob Woodward picks up on Greenspan’s statement about the Iraq War being “largely about oil” and asks him about it.

In the interview, he clarified that sentence in his 531-page book, saying that while securing global oil supplies was “not the administration’s motive,” he had presented the White House with the case for why removing Hussein was important for the global economy. “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.