Inside Job:

By February 2001, the world had passed the "Peak Oil" milestone. No more would our planet be able to produce as much oil as it consumed. With the emergence of India and China as consumer nations, demand would increase at an exponential rate. The U.S. needed to do something now to secure as much oil and gas as it could while at the same time put into place laws that would allow the government to control the expected mass uprisings as oil prices increses produced shortages of food and other necessities.
Only a cataclysmic event would scare the American people into giving up what little freedom they still possessed. Only a tragedy of monumental proportions would make Americans glad to invade those countries that posed threats to our safety.

These men, at the highest levels of government, had the capacity to create such a disaster. Would they have the brass to do it?