The war is not over oil
The oil from Iraq is not going to U.S. companies, but predominately to China, Russia, and France. [1][2] The most powerful military in the world and the region just decided, without any external pressures, to allow it to go to other countries. That by itself is more or less evidence that the U.S. did not ever want the oil invading, unless you suggest that they secretly wanted it but for some unknown reason but didn't act on their ability to do it with literally no other possible obstacle in their own way but their own choices, likely influenced by their morals or just a lack of desire not to obtain oil. It makes sense that it was going to Russia, France and China, as they were the three main countries violated the U.N. oil embargo and illegally sold Iraq weapons to begin with, and were the three companies opposed to the war. [3][4] In fact as the U.S. was the country that lead the charge to put the embargo on the oil, so if they wanted the oil so bad, they could have just traded with Iraq and bought it, forgoing or removing the Embargo and being done with it. The idea that a war was needed to gain access to the oil is more or less, silly. [5]
So, the U.S. isn't getting the oil and doesn't seem to want the oil even though it could in theory, acquire the oil. But the concept of U.S. oil companies infiltrating the U.S. government, manipulating the entire country and 36 others in to going to war for that oil, and somehow trying to profit off of Iraq oil is not only a stretch in and of itself, but it also doesn't make sense. There's really no point to opening up foreign oil reserves for local, American companies to compete with. Not only would these people likely have known that they couldn't just overtake the oil reserves of another country due to international mineral rights (oil companies having billions of dollars from knowing how the oil industry works), but more oil introduced in to the market in and of itself isn't always a good thing. You'd rather your resource be scarce and you be the only supplier, than have too much oil on the open market. When selling a resource, the value generally comes from two things; rarity and demand. You can't exactly change demand without lowering prices, so essentially all you have to control is the rarity of the oil. When we look at the oil glut in the 90's, with oil prices dropping so low it nearly bankrupted the businesses, this was a result of a production of too much oil. Because too much oil was being produced, it's value decreased as the surplus of oil robbed the oil companies of the ability to sell it at higher prices. Just like how price gouging occurs during a hurricane or after a disaster (that is, increasing the prices when consumers absolutely must have it), too much oil decreases the price since it's so available consumers know they have more options, where as too little increases it's price. The demand for oil isn't going away anytime soon; people need it to drive their cars, power oil tankers and even in some cases run their homes. If oil becomes more expensive, people will be forced to buy it at higher prices since they simply cannot do without it; much like water or food, as a necessity oil will be bought irregardless of high prices, unlike say a movie ticket or art. As a fundamental need for modern society, people will continue to pay for it irregardless. If American oil suddenly became the only supply of oil tomorrow, American oil then would profit off of the fact they could increase the prices and no-one could really do anything about it. If American oil became more rare, it's value would go up, and thus so would the profits. Introducing foreign oil, even if it was in control of by American companies, would actually be a bad thing, as the price of oil would go down, without an appreciable increase in demand. Simply pumping out more oil without an increase in demand for that oil would create another oil glut, which would only be harmful for American oil companies. They have no vested interest in acquiring Iraq oil, they want to sell their own oil.
This isn't just a common sense thing, it's the fundamentals of business that any billionaire oil investor would know about. If anything, these oil industries if acting purely in the sense to make money would have opposed the war, instead of supporting it. The fact that George Bush, who had ties to the oil industry supported the war is literally the exact opposite of what one would expect if he was trying to benefit the oil industry. And this man and these companies wouldn't have taken over the U.S. and dozens of other countries to do something someone with any common sense would know was a bad idea. It's even more far fetched to believe they were so intelligent to be able to take over the world's governments, but so stupid to think that it would make them any money to do so. The literal experts in making billions of dollars off of oil making this colossal of a mistake.
This all of course under the assumption that acquiring oil at all would somehow mean that the war was over oil. Even if American companies profited off of the oil, how would this prove that the war was for profit? Doctors make profit from what they do, the red cross and so on, but if you simply make money that doesn't automatically make you evil. You would do it because it's the morally right thing, but if you can make money in the process you'll try. Money is needed to run the operations, purchase equipment and finance operations in any business or industry, be it charity or for profit. The idea that making money automatically makes them bad people or means that they did it for the money or even for those oil companies is just as far fetched. The only argument you can make is that they are guilty of "thought crimes" for wanting to invade for oil but for some unknown reason decided not to. And if they wanted to steal the oil but chose not to, doesn't that make them better people as a result? The entire argument is ridiculous in it's own right.
In any case, there's no evidence to support the idea that the war was over oil, or that it would even make sense to be. Not only is there not a shred of proof, but no logic. For anyone who still believes it, my question is, out of the thousands of potential reasons with no evidence and that equally make no sense, why this one specifically, especially with the counter evidence available? The only reality is a refusal to admit that you are wrong ,rather than any real concern for the truth. And if you come up with a new reason to hate the military after the fact, you're just backpedaling and trying to reinvent a new reason to hate them, which is where the problem lies; in nothing but pure bigotry.
Other information
WMD's were found in Iraq in 2006, contrary to the idea that WMD's were never found or used by Saddam. The Taliban was created 6 years after the Russian-Afghanistan war, by Pakistan, contrary to the notion that the U.S. was responsible for their creation, or Al-Qaeda, during the Russian-Afghanistan war. [1][2][3] In fact the Mujahdeen in Afghanistan remained diametrically opposed to the Taliban up until and past the American invasion, being the first individuals the U.S. were allied with when fighting the war and using their airfields to initially land american aircraft in the region. Even if it were true that America did create these organizations, it would only be more of a moral obligation to invade and clean up our mess, not really being a good logical reason to oppose the war. Over 30 countries were involved in the war, meaning it wasn't a uniquely American war. The war was going on long before the U.S. and the international coalition got involved, meaning that the hundreds of thousands of people dying was occurring before and after the invasion; it's not right to assume that the American invasion was responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, when Saddam committed the atrocities and we invaded in response to that. Hitler for example killed millions of jews after the Americans invaded in WWII, but that is not proof that it was ever our fault.
While the U.N. estimate is that the U.S. killed 500 innocent civilians by accident, even if we killed 15,000 that's still far less than the hundreds of thousands killed by Saddam and likely that would have died (such as the 4.5 million refugees) without out intervention. Drones have at most killed less than 20 innocent people compared to at least 1,200 terrorists and while tragic, suggests that we are doing far more good than harm. Iraq threatened their neighbors, including Israel, Pakistan and Iran, countries with massive militaries and possibly nuclear weapons, which could have lead to the beginning of the third world war; a nuclear war. Stopping Iraq from plunging the already unstable middle east in to such a war possibly saved not only the entire middle east, but the world. Iraq had the 5th largest military in the world, only behind North Korea, China, Russia or the U.S., making them a considerable threat with or without WMD's. The humanitarian crisis had escalated to a point where the 4.5 million+ refugees and internally displaced persons would have died as the food and water provided by humanitarian forces could not reach the civilians as Saddam stole them. This necessitated a ground invasion rather than simply a no-fly zone, and thus a ground invasion became inevitable when ground forces were need to distribute food and water to the local kurdish population that the Iraq government was waging a war of genocide against.
Finally, we're down to the exclusionary fallacy. The argument that because we weren't involved in dozens of other wars (even though in most cases we were), this is an indication that this particular war must have been for profit is a bit odd. "Oh, you donated to a cancer charity? Why not AID's, as well? What a monster, you must have a personal reason for donating to a cancer charity!" The argument that if we pick to dedicate our resources to one thing, we must have not being doing it out of the goodness of our hearts because there are thousands of other potential ways we could have helped people. An individual can still be good and moral for trying to solve as many problems in the world as they can, even if they themselves cannot solve all of them, and the same is true with governments. The argument that by helping anyone you are guilty of not helping some people is ridiculous as those who help no-one help even less people by this mentality. Even when we do nothing, we are still guilty of not helping anyone, rather than some people. This argument rests on the idea that people are perfect and could choose to help everyone if they wanted, and that if they can help one group of people that they could help all of them. The sad reality is, this simply isn't true, but doing what's best in the world requires acting on occasion.
As well, most of Iraq's military equipment came from Russia, France, and China, with roughly 90% being from these combined sources, and very little coming from the U.S.
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