Paules, I appreciate the tone of your response. It is refreshing.
However, 1441 was not an authorization for military intervention. That is why nations such as Syria voted for it. Such an act required another meeting of the Security Council, something that the never happened because support for military option was not forecoming in the UNSC. The US and UK went off on their own and invaded Iraq.
Point 2: I was referring to the 2003 invasion, not the 1991 one, hence the comment about $140/barrel. Although I did hit the “#” key instead of “$”. 
Point 3: Iraq did of course pump oil. My point was that production was far below nominal for nearly all of the period from 1980 to 2008 while Iraq’s neighbors were having no such problems. Therefore, Iraq’s neighbors have much less oil as a percentage of their national reserves than Iraq does. Iraq may ultimately have more oil, right now, than Saudi Arabia does. It seems likely; research and exploration of Iraq’s oil fields is far less complete than other oil-producing nations.
Points 4 and 5: Our intelligence “failures” were deliberate. Plausable deniability. After all, part of the CYA game is to make it plausible you made a good-faith mistake. Americans are uncomfortable with accusing somebody of lying. “Must have made a mistake” is a common excuse, or “must have misunderstood”. It’s always part of the calculation, the “what if we’re wrong?” scenario.
Remember, Cheney had is own Intelligence section operating out of his Vice-Presidential office who’s job was to process this kind of thing. When you base your decision on intelligence that you yourself manufactured, it’s not an intelligence failure, it’s a lie.
Continually beating up the press as being “unpatriotic” for questioning the administration doubtless encouraged dissent, and conservative dominance of the media helped as well.
And we can’t forget politicalization and cronyism of the various government agencies. Bush and Rove have little scruples against doing that.
Neocons has been frothing to get Saddam since the ’90s. Cheney himself said (as SecDef) a couple of years after the 1991 Gulf War that invading Iraq would be a quagmire.
The fact that Saudis don’t need to work, as you claim, combined with religious fundamentalism, means that they have a lot of time to sit around and think and talk and get politically active. People by and large want to work, to be productive, to accomplish things. Many in Saudi Arabia do not have that chance and are not happy, despite their material needs being met.
I know the conservative view of people is that given a choice, people will jump at the chance to be welfare queens, but that really isn’t the case.
And they’re competing with millions of foreign workers that come there, most of them non-Arab and non-Muslim. Which makes them angry because they see is an an affront to Islam. And they have times to let that anger build.
Regarding the Cheney energy meeting, the fact that the task force met was well-publicized. The attendees, the documents, the records, and the conclusions are all currently covered under “executive priviledge”, and several organizations such as Judicial Watch and Project Censored are currently in the process of litigation about them.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/Litigation-cheney-energy-task-force
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/8-secrets-of-cheneys-energy-task-force-come-to-light/
