Former top American central banker Alan Greenspan blasts the White House for invading Iraq, saying the war was linked to US thirst for oil.

Alan Greenspan, in his new book, takes swipes at the US President's administration for everything from its motives for invading Iraq to its unbridled spending.

The most explosive charge in Greenspan's memoir, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," is that the George W. Bush administration was driven to overthrow Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in a large part by a lust for Iraq's oil.

"I'm saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows -- the Iraq war is largely about oil," he wrote in reported excerpts of the book, which hits bookstore shelves Monday.

Greenspan also accuses President George W. Bush of abandoning Republican principles on the economy.

Greenspan, a lifelong Republican, writes that he advised the White House to veto some bills to curb "out-of-control" spending while the Republicans controlled Congress.

According to The Wall Street Journal, he says that Bush's failure to do so "was a major mistake."

Republicans in Congress, he writes, "swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither."

"They deserved to lose" in the 2006 elections when the Democrats retook control of Congress, he adds.

DT/DT