Wolfowitz made some interesting comments yesterday.

From The Guardian:

Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

But here it says:

The difference between North Korea and Iraq, Wolfowitz said, is that the United States could not use economic pressure to strangle Hussein's regime "because the country floats on a sea of oil." North Korea, by comparison, is near economic collapse, and that offers "a major point of leverage," he said.

The normally reliable Guardian may have quoted Wolfowitz out of context. It doesn't make sense for him to admit something that huge. More on this will come out soon, I'm sure.

UPDATE: From the AP:

At the conference, Wolfowitz said North Korea would respond to economic action, unlike Iraq (news - web sites) where military action was necessary because oil money had been propping up its regime despite sanctions.

It looks certain the Guardian took the remarks out of context. The whole war being about just oil doesn't make sense anyway. It would have been infinitely cheaper to make a deal with Saddam. Look at all the rebuilding costs we're saddled with now. Iraq's oil fields may be fairly low yield anyway, so it's questionable that it would benefit us to have control. No countries were depending on Iraq's oil, so the control of the reserves idea doesn't seem to fly either. Oil may have been part of it, but it's not the main reason.

Anyway, Kos and others are discussing the topic.

UPDATED UPDATE: The more I look at Wolfowitz's comments, the more I think he was just reaching for something to justify the difference in action towards NK and Iraq. He chose oil, maybe not a wise decision, considering that was the main ulterior motive claim for the war. But I guess it shows how confident he is in the state of the media here, he doesn't have to worry about it being twisted like a lefty would.