Despite the hawkish rantings of keyboard kommandos, destroying a nation or its populace accomplishes nothing except invoking the ire of every arab state and terrorist cell in the area and beyond.
We needed to clean house in Iraq. But the job is far from over. We won every major battle in Viet Nam but we still lost the war. There will always be hard core resistance, which must be ferretted out and destroyed without mercy. However, humanitarian aid to those civilians who are or can be supportive of us is more effective and cheaper than military intervention.
Iraqi oil production and sales should be through current Iraqi petroleum concerns, but with the US pulling the strings. France can twist in the wind as far as their getting their hands on the pie.