Michael Kinsley, writing for Slate, asks what's "Bush's Ulterior Motive"    (hint, it's 3 letters, starts with "O", ends with "L" and there's an "I" in the middle).   I actually think that Kinsley is a pretty smart dude.   And even though we're on opposite sides of many a debate (not that I've ever had the honor to sit directly across the table from him ;-) I can generally say I respect the guy.   Except for this.

He starts by attacking both the Oil theory & also the Fukuyama theory as motivations for W to go after Iraq:

it is hard to dismiss the official reasons for this war as disingenuous without some theory about what the ulterior motive or unspoken war aim might be. George W. Bush is not taking the nation into war to avenge his father or as a “wag the dog” strategy to win re-election, as Bush’s more cynical opponents have charged. He deserves more credit than that. Nor is he planning to conquer and occupy Iraq in order to bring human rights to the Iraqi people or start a chain reaction of democracy throughout the Middle East, as he and his supporters have lately augmented the official war aims. He doesn’t deserve that much credit.

I actually consider the "chain reaction of democracy" rationale the most strongly held by the administration because it's the only long term solution to the terrorism root cause.  The same technology that shrinks the world also super-empowers the individual to do truly nasty things.   Our only hope is to (start to) replicate our ideals abroad.

The problem is, the administration can't come out and say it too emphatically because it could injure our tactical support from the other nations.   If we were too aggressive about saying that we're civil reengineering, folks like Iran, who are currently content to sorta sit on the sidelines, could actively create a world of hurt for us as we digest the Iraqi problem first.

But, Kinsley isn't swayed.   Fine, he's entitled to his (misguided) opinion :-)  And, for a while, he pseudo-intelligently discusses the reasons why the Oil argument is a red herring that could actually swing either way:

As a seller, does the oil industry want higher prices for its product? Or as a buyer and importer, does it want lower prices? Does it long for stability, or hunger for new opportunities that might emerge from the chaos? And how will the war affect the price of oil anyhow? That price has been going up in anticipation. But when the war is successfully over, Iraqi oil will probably reduce prices...

Also cool.   I'm at last beginning to feel like there's some real intellectual honesty to the Oil part of the debate coming from a key mouthpiece on the left.   But, in homage to his buddies & leftist ideology, he is forced to end with an olive branch to his intellectual heirs:

I don’t believe that President Bush is prosecuting a war against Iraq in order to enrich, or more accurately further enrich, his oil-patch cronies. But we all are happier when we can make our friends happy. All this happiness among his buddies must at least make a man like Bush, who is not plagued by self-doubt or second thoughts in any event, even more confident as he marches forward.

Sheesh.   So Bush's primary constituency is the oil-patch crowd and they're secrety manipulating geopolitics Iraq by bathing George in Good Will?   W, of course, in congruence with leftist conventional wisdom, is simply too stupid to see through these guys and is thus marching headstrong into a war.   There's an oil reason in there somewhere, dammit!