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Corrections and clarifications

Thursday June 5, 2003

A report which was posted on our website on June 4 under the heading 
"Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil" misconstrued remarks made by the 
US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, making it appear that he 
had said that oil was the main reason for going to war in Iraq. He did not 
say that. He said, according to the Department of Defence website, 
"The ... difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually 
no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of 
oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of 
economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage 
whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that 
with Iraq." The sense was clearly that the US had no economic options 
by means of which to achieve its objectives, not that the economic value 
of the oil motivated the war. The report appeared only on the website 
and has now been removed.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/corrections/story/0,3604,971436,00.html


Cheers, Steve..

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