"Oil" is a kind of summary but not the over-simplification that we often make it sound like. Iraq has the 5th oil reserves in the world and posed no threats to

"Oil" is a kind of summary but not the over-simplification that we often make it sound like. Iraq has the 5th oil reserves in the world and posed no threats to US and was not financing terrorism. If anything it kept Iran busy which would be in US' interest. The true motivations of the different actors are diverse and as the president and his team is effectively above the law since Obama said he would not open an investigation for war crimes, we will have only speculations. Bush may have had the willingness to continue his father's job or just simple religious beliefs: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/aug/10/religion-george-bush https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/a... Dick Cheney is the salient case for oil. He had enormous conflicts of interest, having led Halliburton, who reaped enormous war contracts in Iraq. John Kerry called for an investigation in 2004 about that: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/28/us/a-closer-look-at-cheney-and-halliburton.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/28/us/a-closer-look-at-cheney... We also know that hundreds of millions of dollars were erroneously/fraudulently charged to the US: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jun/09/arianna-huffington/halliburton-kbr-and-iraq-war-contracting-history-s/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jun/... Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are core believer of the "Project for the New American Century" thinktank that sees the war against terrorism as WW4 (Cold War being WW3) and sees seizing oil resources as primordial. Yes, this is a really simplistic vision, but remember that these people are just slightly more intellectual than Trump's team...