According to the Huffington Post, on May 2, 2008, presidential hopeful John McCain commented on his earlier remarks from the day, regarding the war in Iraq and the involvement of oil: ” ‘No, no, I was talking about that we had fought the Gulf War for several reasons,’ McCain told reporters. One reason was Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, he said. ‘But also we didn’t want him to have control over the oil, and that part of the world is critical to us because of our dependency on foreign oil, and it’s more important than any other part of the world,’ he said. ‘If the word *again* was misconstrued, I want us to remove our dependency on foreign oil for national security reasons, and that’s all I mean,’ McCain said. ‘The Congressional Record is very clear: I said we went to war in Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction,’ he said.”
– Huffington Post Staff, “McCain Implies Iraq War Is For Oil: Watch Video, (transcribed),” The Huffington Post, May 10, 2008