[rtkwe]

I think the 'US did it for the oil' has always been just a pithy jab at the US more than the truth. Looking at what actually happened it looks like Ahmad Chalabi lied to enough people (even after being labelled as an unreliable source by the US intelligence agencies) to convince the US to get involved in his life long goal to get him and the Shiites back into power in Iraq after being forced out by Saddam's Baath party and the Shia faction it represented.

[tehjoker]

Oil, family business, getting strategic military bases oriented towards Iran, China, and Russia, wanting to really break America of "Vietnam Syndrome". It's all there!

[SuoDuanDao]

Interesting, I didn't think the US trusted people like Chalabi to that degree. Since watching Game of Thrones it's looked to me like it was a personal feud between two oligarchical families that had a falling out.

[rtkwe]

He'd been working on it for decades in exile trying to convince the US to back rebellions in Iraq then trying to get the US to depose Saddam itself. Of course there's rarely a single reason anything involving a whole government decides to do something but I think it'd be ridiculous to not say Chalabi was one of the big factors leading to the US invasion of Iraq. Another potential is the fact that the Bush family might have felt like they had unfinished work there from the first invasion where the US stopped short of deposing Saddam over Kuwait.