[mcguire]

I have never seen a coherent explanation of what was going through anyone's mind regarding the Iraq war. The nearest I've heard is that Iraq was Bush's idee fixe going into office. (My personal theory was that Bush realized Afghanistan was not going to get him re-elected to a second term.)

[jasonwatkinspdx]

It's not really a complex mystery. GWB's admin was heavily stacked with people from a particular ideological clique, the Project for a New American Century folks. Cheney, Wolfowitz, etc. These folks had done the essay and speech circuit for well over a decade before 9/11 happened, and were very clear about their perspective and aims. I'd summarize those as:

~"American hegemony is net good for the world, therefor the US should not hesitate to use military power, unilaterally, to reshape the world towards US interests, without apology."

These are people that rejected any concept of a collaborative or consensus based world order among peer powers, consent of those governed but subjects of a weaker state, etc, vs the US becoming a benevolent in their imagination unipolar power. They'd spent most of the 90s writing essays about why the US should just straight up depose Saddam and allow US private interests to take over all Iraqi oil infrastructure.

These people had an extremely hawkish take on US foreign policy and it's undeniable that 9/11 dropped a giant present right in their lap. They did exactly what they'd already told the world they wanted to do as a response just using 9/11 as a new justification. The only real surprise is they failed to convince everyone on taking over Iran too.

As for GWB himself, it's not clear what his personal views were other than he stacked his admin full of these people and clearly trusted them. The argument that he had a personal grudge vs Saddam due to his father makes perfect sense and would be an easy way to persuade him personally.

[ProjectArcturis]

I think a lot of the Bush folks thought of Saddam as a kind of rogue asset. They'd funded him to attack the Iranians, and then he went off reservation when he invaded Kuwait, and later tried to assassinate HW Bush. They knew he had chemical weapons (because they had sold them to him), and tricked themselves into believing he was developing nukes. 9/11 ramped up the paranoia and gave the Bush administration license to lie their way into war.

[giantrobot]

Prior to the Iraq war Saddam was pressing the UN to lift a bunch of sanctions and courting Russian and European oil companies to come in and run their oil operations. By the time of the invasion Iraq's oil infrastructure had been gutted due to sanctions.

This was a complete anathema to the PNAC psychos' vision of the Middle East [0]. They basically wanted to exact control over the majority share of OPEC producers for power over economic rivals (as they saw them).

The PNAC [1] had been pushing for war in the Middle East from their founding in the 90s. They got a lot of buy-in from all the Nixonites in GWB's administration. Rumsfeld set up the Office of Special Plans [2] that stovepiped unvetted intelligence from a bunch of Iraqi expats and exiles to push PNAC narratives to GWB.

[0] https://archive.org/details/RebuildingAmericasDefenses

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans

[l332mn]

The most credible theory in my eyes as to why they needed to invade Iraq, was that Saddam intended to boycott the US dollar, and rather sell Iraq's oil in Euros.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/16/iraq.theeur...

There's a de facto global tacit agreement to sell oil in US dollars - on pain of unilateral sanctions by the US or military intervention by the US military. All countries who deviate from this agreement are in fact deemed enemies of the US. This includes, Iran, Venezuela, Russia and China, and (formely) Iraq and Libya. When they don't, that means that the US can't simply print dollars as they please and force other countries (who purchases that oil) to purchase US debt as well. Pricing oil in currencies other than the worlds reserve currency (the US dollar) affects the dollar value greatly. The US printed about 10 trillion dollars in two years. The rest of the oil-dependent world pays the price.

[Supermancho]

> There's a de facto global tacit agreement to sell oil in US dollars - on pain of unilateral sanctions by the US or military intervention by the US military.

That is 100% how the US has managed to maintain as a "stable" global currency.

[bigodbiel]

iirc there were some rumors that Iraq was personal for him because of his father’s handling of it, and subsequent electoral defeat.

[hindsightbias]

There’s only one conspiracy that is logically consistent with the outcome - that Cheney was a witting or unwitting asset of the Iranian regime.

[1024core]

Not really. Cheney was under the influence of Ahmad Chalabi, who was a deep Iranian asset. Chalabi's job was to get the US to invade Iraq and dispose of Saddam. He succeeded admirably, and was given an award by Iran.

[atatatat]

conspiracy theory**