OIL AS CAUSUS BELLI?

The U.S. considered using airborne troops to seize oil fields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi in response to the 1973 oil embargo, according to a Washington Post story.

Based on a recently declassified British intelligence memo, the story quotes Defense Secretary James Schlesinger sayding the U.S. wouldn't tolerate threats from "under-developed, under-populated" nations" and that "it was no longer obvious to him that the United States could not use force."

In another memo, Prime Minister Edward Heath characterized Nixon as "an American president in the Watergate position apparently prepared to go to such lengths at a moment's notice without consultation with his allies ... without any justification in the military situation at the time."

Does it seem feasible that oil had at least something to do with U.S. occupation of Iraq, which has the world's second-largest proven oil reserves? Especially in the absence of any weapons of mass destructions despite the most intensive manhunt in history?