If it was about oil it was STILL a dumb strategy.
What has happened to the price of oil since we started our Mesopotamian Adventure?
"Getting oil" is not the same as "getting oil
cheaply."
The simple fact is that proven oil reserves, at the current world annual increase in consumption of 2%, will run out in 30 years. The unproven but "it's reasonable to suppose they're there" oil reserves will run out 25 years after that.
About three-quarters of world oil reserves are in the USA, Canada, Iraq and the states bordering Iraq (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Syria). The USA uses 25% of the world's oil supply. The USA is also particularly keen on the Iraqi and Saudi oil, since they have proportionally lighter oils - they have more of the kind of oil you can easily turn into jet fuel, car fuel, etc, whereas other countries have heavier oil.
It's not about the USA having
cheap oil, it's about the USA having
enough oil at any price. The crunch in supply is coming in the next decade or two. At some point, with India and China's rising industrial economies, demand will greatly outstrip supply. At that point, price will be no object, but it'll be kept down to merely huge levels
for the USA by its puppet state in Iraq, and the threat to surrounding states.
The USA went to war in Iraq in 2003 for the same reasons Japan went to war in the Pacific in 1941 - for resources, to keep its way of life going. The issue for Japan was not the price of oil, the issue was having enough oil at any price.
Luckily for the USA, there is no-one to the USA in 2003 onwards what the USA was to Japan in 1941.