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I think that Buchanan has it wrong, in fact almost everybody has it wrong. Taking Iraq had nothing to do with neocons, terrorists, Israel, WMDs, Saddam, 9/11, etc... It was all about the oil. Anyone who objects to fighting this relatively small war over oil, consider how your lives would change without a steady cheap supply of it. Not just the availability and price of gas for your car but also the trucks, trains and ships that bring groceries and other items to stores near you, the jobs in shipping and retail related to those grocieries and supplies, the jobs in manufacturing that are still left, the entire national and international economy that depends on a steady, reasonably priced supply of oil for the forseeable future. Much larger wars have been fought over much lesser stakes. Future wars will be fought over oil. We have a toe hold in an oil rich region. That is a strategic advantage.

What Buchanan concludes about the mentioned neocons is accurate, they have a long paper trail on the matter and their words and deeds are historic record whether one likes Buchanan or not. However the neoncon ideas for remaking the mid east and forging a global Pax Americana is only one side of a multifaceted issue.

You are correct about oil but for the wrong reasons. On the face of it the First Gulf War was about cheap oil but that argument does not hold up to scrutiny. Saddam made his money off of oil. It serves him no good to withhold oil from the US. We would have mid east oil no matter who controlled it. The current war against Iraq could not logically be construed about the oil supply in any way though. However one could argue it being over the petrol market being based on dollars rather than euros, a matter which is of critical importance to us. It also is about which countries' corporations get the oil contracts in Iraq - France and Russia or the US and Britain.

Furthermore the war is about strategic positioning of our military further into the region in order to secure the development and export of central Asian oil deposits. Stabilizing Afghanistan and placing a friendly regime in there also furthers this end, coincidentally. Conclusion - the war is over power and money and who is top dog in that equation. Of course playing kng of the world was never a tenet of conservatism. Perhaps we have a "new" conservatism indeed.