Rationale for the Iraq War

President George Bush, surrounded by leaders of the House and Senate, announces the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq, October 2, 2002.

The October 2002, US congress Iraq War Resolution cited many factors to justify the use of military force against Iraq:

• Iraq's noncompliance with the conditions of the 1991 ceasefire agreement, including interference with U.N. weapons inspectors.
• Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, and programs to develop such weapons, posed a "threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region."
• Iraq's "brutal repression of its civilian population."
• Iraq's "capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people".
• Iraq's hostility towards the United States as demonstrated by the 1993 assassination attempt on former President George H. W. Bush and firing on coalition aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones following the 1991 Gulf War.
• Members of Al-Qaeda, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq.
• Iraq's "continuing to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations," including anti-United States terrorist organizations.
• Iraq paid bounty to families of suicide bombers.
• The efforts by the Congress and the President to fight terrorists, including the September 11, 2001 terrorists and those who aided or harbored them.
• The authorization by the Constitution and the Congress for the President to fight anti-United States terrorism.
• The governments in Turkey, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia feared Saddam and wanted him removed from power.
• Citing the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, the resolution reiterated that it should be the policy of the United States to remove the Saddam Hussein regime and promote a democratic replacement.

The Resolution required President Bush's diplomatic efforts at the U.N. Security Council to "obtain prompt and decisive action by the Security Council to ensure that Iraq abandons its strategy of delay, evasion, and noncompliance and promptly and strictly complies with all relevant Security Council resolutions." It authorized the United States to use military force to "defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq."

Between 1991 and 1998, the United Nations Security Council tasked the United Nations Special Commission on Disarmament (UNSCOM) with finding and destroying Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. In 1996, UNSCOM discovered evidence of continued biological weapons research and supervised destruction of the Al Hakam biological weapons production site—allegedly converted to a chicken feed plant, but retaining its barbed wire fences and antiaircraft defenses.[42][43] In 1998, Scott Ritter, leader of a UNSCOM inspection team, found gaps in the prisoner records of Abu Ghraib when investigating allegations that prisoners had been used to test Anthrax weapons. Asked to explain the missing documents, the Iraqi government charged that Ritter was working for the CIA and refused to cooperate further with UNSCOM.

On August 26, 1998, approximately two months before the US ordered United Nations inspectors withdrawn from Iraq, Scott Ritter resigned from his position rather than participate in what he called the "illusion of arms control." In his resignation letter to Ambassador Butler,[44] Ritter wrote: "The sad truth is that Iraq today is not disarmed. ... UNSCOM has good reason to believe that there are significant numbers of proscribed weapons and related components and the means to manufacture such weapons unaccounted for in Iraq today … Iraq has lied to the Special Commission and the world since day one concerning the true scope and nature of its proscribed programs and weapons systems." On September 7, 1998, in testimony to the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committee,[45] Scott Ritter was asked by John McCain (R, AZ) whether UNSCOM had intelligence suggesting that Iraq had assembled the components for three nuclear weapons and all that it lacked was the fissile material. Ritter replied: "The Special Commission has intelligence information, which suggests that components necessary for three nuclear weapons exists, lacking the fissile material. Yes, sir."

On November 8, 2002, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1441, giving Iraq "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations" including unrestricted inspections by the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Saddam Hussein accepted the resolution on November 13 and inspectors returned to Iraq under the direction of UNMOVIC chairman Hans Blix and IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei. Between that time and the time of the invasion, the IAEA "found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq"; the IAEA concluded that certain items which could have been used in nuclear enrichment centrifuges, such as aluminum tubes, were in fact intended for other uses.[46] UNMOVIC "did not find evidence of the continuation or resumption of programmes of weapons of mass destruction" or significant quantities of proscribed items. UNMOVIC did supervise the destruction of a small number of empty chemical rocket warheads, 50 liters of mustard gas that had been declared by Iraq and sealed by UNSCOM in 1998, and laboratory quantities of a mustard gas precursor, along with about 50 Al-Samoud missiles of a design that Iraq claimed did not exceed the permitted 150 km range, but which had travelled up to 183 km in tests. Shortly before the invasion, UNMOVIC stated that it would take "months" to verify Iraqi compliance with resolution 1441.[47][48][49]

After the invasion, the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), headed by American David Kay, was tasked with searching for weapons of mass destruction. The survey ultimately concluded that Iraqi production of weapons of mass destruction ceased and all major stockpiles were destroyed in 1991 when economic sanctions were imposed, but that the expertise to restart production once sanctions were lifted was preserved. The group also concluded that Iraq continued developing long range missiles proscribed by the U.N. until just before the 2003 invasion.

In an interim report on October 3, 2003, Kay reported that the group had "not yet found stocks of weapons", but had discovered "dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities" including clandestine laboratories "suitable for continuing CBW [chemical and biological warfare] research", a prison laboratory complex "possibly used in human testing of BW agents", a vial of live C. botulinum Okra B bacteria kept in one scientist's home, small parts and twelve-year-old documents "that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment", partially declared UAVs and undeclared fuel for Scud missiles with ranges beyond the 150 km U.N. limits, "[p]lans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km", attempts to acquire long range missile technology from North Korea, and document destruction in headquarters buildings in Baghdad. None of the weapons of mass destruction programs involved active production; they instead appeared to be targeted at retaining the expertise needed to resume work once sanctions were dropped. Iraqi personnel involved with much of this work indicated they had orders to conceal it from U.N. weapons inspectors.[50][51]

After Charles Duelfer took over from Kay in January 2004, Kay said at a Senate hearing that "we were almost all wrong" about Iraq having stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but that the other ISG findings made Iraq potentially "more dangerous" than was thought before the war.[52][53] In an interview, Kay said that "a lot" of the former Iraqi government's weapons of mass destruction program had been moved to Syria shortly before the 2003 invasion, albeit not including large stockpiles of weapons.[54]

On September 30, 2004, the ISG, under Charles Duelfer, issued a comprehensive report. The report stated that "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability … was essentially destroyed in 1991" and that Saddam Hussein subsequently focused on ending the sanctions and "preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted". No evidence was found for continued active production of weapons of mass destruction subsequent to the imposition of sanctions in 1991, though "[b]y 2000–2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions".[55]

The report concluded in its Key Findings that: "Saddam [Saddam Hussein] so dominated the Iraqi Regime that its strategic intent was his alone... The former Regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of weapons of mass destruction after sanctions. Neither was there an identifiable group of weapons of mass destruction policy makers or planners separate from Saddam. Instead, his lieutenants understood weapons of mass destruction revival was his goal from their long association with Saddam and his infrequent, but firm, verbal comments and directions to them." The report also noted that "Iran was the pre-eminent motivator of [Iraq's weapons of mass destruction revival] policy. ... The wish to balance Israel and acquire status and influence in the Arab world were also considerations, but secondary." A March 2005 addendum to the report stated that "[B]ased on the evidence available at present, ISG judged that it was unlikely that an official transfer of weapons of mass destruction material from Iraq to Syria took place. However, ISG was unable to rule out unofficial movement of limited weapons of mass destruction-related materials."[40][56]

On January 12, 2005, US military forces abandoned the formal search. Transcripts from high level meetings within Saddam Hussein's government before the invasion are consistent with the ISG conclusion that he destroyed his stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction but maintained the expertise to restart production.[57]

During the post-invasion search for weapons of mass destruction, US and Polish forces located decayed chemical weapons that dated to the Iran–Iraq War. These discoveries led former senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) and representative Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) to say that the US had indeed found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.[41]

These assertions were directly contradicted by weapons experts David Kay, the original director of the Iraq Survey Group, and his successor Charles Duelfer. Both Kay and Duelfer stated that the chemical weapons found were not the "weapons of mass destruction" that the US was looking for. Kay added that experts on Iraq's chemical weapons are in "almost 100 percent agreement" that sarin nerve agent produced in the 1980s would no longer be dangerous and that the chemical weapons found were "less toxic than most things that Americans have under their kitchen sink at this point". In reply, Hoekstra said "I am 100 percent sure if David Kay had the opportunity to look at the reports.. he would agree.. these things are lethal and deadly."[58] Discussing the findings on NPR's Talk of the Nation, Charles Duelfer described such residual chemical munitions as hazardous but not deadly.

What we found, both as UN and later when I was with the Iraq Survey Group, is that some of these rounds would have highly degraded agent, but it is still dangerous. You know, it can be a local hazard. If an insurgent got it and wanted to create a local hazard, it could be exploded. When I was running the ISG—the Iraq Survey Group—we had a couple of them that had been turned in to these IEDs, the improvised explosive devices. But they are local hazards. They are not a major, you know, weapon of mass destruction.[59]

The degraded chemical weapons were first discovered in May 2004, when a binary sarin nerve gas shell was used in an improvised explosive device (roadside bomb) in Iraq. The device exploded before it could be disarmed, and two soldiers displayed symptoms of minor sarin exposure. The 155 mm shell was unmarked and rigged as if it were a normal high-explosive shell, indicating that the insurgents who placed the device did not know it contained nerve gas. Earlier in the month, a shell containing mustard gas was found abandoned in the median of a road in Baghdad.[60][61]

In July 2004, Polish troops also found evidence of degraded chemical weapons when they discovered insurgents trying to purchase cyclosarin gas warheads produced during the Iran–Iraq War. In their efforts to thwart insurgents acquiring these weapons, Polish troops purchased two rockets on June 23, 2004. The US military later determined that the two rockets had only trace elements of sarin that were so small and deteriorated as to be virtually harmless and would have "limited to no impact if used by insurgents against coalition forces".[62]

The failure to find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq caused considerable controversy, particularly in the United States. US President George W. Bush and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair defended their decision to go to war, alleging that many nations, even those opposed to war, believed that the Saddam Hussein government was actively developing weapons of mass destructions.

Critics such as Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean charged that the Bush and Blair administrations deliberately falsified evidence to build a case for war.[64] These criticisms were strengthened with the 2005 release of the so-called Downing Street Memo, written in July 2002, in which the former head of British Military Intelligence wrote that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of removing Saddam Hussein from power.[65]

While the Downing Street Memo and the yellowcake uranium scandal lent credence to claims that intelligence was manipulated, two bipartisan investigations, one by the Senate Intelligence Committee and the other by a specially appointed Iraq Intelligence Commission chaired by Charles Robb and Laurence Silberman, found no evidence of political pressure applied to intelligence analysts.[66] An independent assessment by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that Bush Administration officials did misuse intelligence in their public communications. For example, Vice President Dick Cheney's September 2002 statement on Meet the Press that "we do know, with absolute certainty, that he (Saddam) is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon," was inconsistent with the views of the intelligence community at the time.[66]

A study coauthored by the Center for Public Integrity found that in the two years after September 11, 2001 the president and top administration officials had made 935 false statements, in an orchestrated public relations campaign to galvanize public opinion for the war, and that the press was largely complicit in its uncritical coverage of the reasons adduced for going to war.[67][68] PBS commentator Bill Moyers had made similar points throughout the run up to the Iraq War, and prior to a national press conference on the Iraq War[69] Moyers correctly predicted "at least a dozen times during this press conference he [the President] will invoke 9/11 and Al-Qaeda to justify a preemptive attack on a country that has not attacked America. But the White House press corps will ask no hard questions tonight about those claims."[70][71] Moyers later also denounced the complicity of the press in the administration's campaign for the war, saying that the media "surrendered its independence and skepticism to join with [the US] government in marching to war," and that the administration "needed a compliant press, to pass on their propaganda as news and cheer them on."[71]

Many in the intelligence community expressed sincere regret over the flawed predictions about Iraqi weapons programs. Testifying before Congress in January 2004, David Kay, the original director of the Iraq Survey Group, said unequivocally that "It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing."[72] He later added in an interview that the intelligence community owed the President an apology.[73]

In the aftermath of the invasion, much attention was also paid to the role of the press in promoting government claims concerning weapons of mass destruction production in Iraq. Between 1998 and 2003, The New York Times and other influential US newspapers published numerous articles about suspected Iraqi rearmament programs with headlines like "Iraqi Work Toward A-Bomb Reported" and "Iraq Suspected of Secret Germ War Effort." It later turned out that many of the sources for these articles were unreliable, and that some were tied to Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi exile with close ties to the Bush Administration who was a consistent supporter of an invasion.[74][75][76]

Some controversy also exists regarding whether the invasion increased or decreased the potential for nuclear proliferation. For example, hundreds of tons of dual-use high explosives that could be used to detonate fissile material in a nuclear weapon were sealed by the IAEA at the Al Qa'qaa site in January 2003. Immediately before the invasion, UN Inspectors had checked the locked bunker doors, but not the actual contents; the bunkers also had large ventilation shafts that were not sealed. By October, the material was no longer present. The IAEA expressed concerns that the material might have been looted after the invasion, posing a nuclear proliferation threat. The US released satellite photographs from March 17, showing trucks at the site large enough to remove substantial amounts of material before US forces reached the area in April. Ultimately, Major Austin Pearson of Task Force Bullet, a task force charged with securing and destroying Iraqi ammunition after the invasion, stated that the task force had removed about 250 tons of material from the site and had detonated it or used it to detonate other munitions. Similar concerns were raised about other dual use materials, such as high strength aluminum; before the invasion, the US cited them as evidence for an Iraqi nuclear weapons program, while the IAEA was satisfied that they were being used for permitted industrial uses; after the war, the IAEA emphasized the proliferation concern, while the Duelfer report mentioned the material's use as scrap. Possible chemical weapons laboratories have also been found which were built subsequent to the 2003 invasion, apparently by insurgent forces.[77]

On August 2, 2004, President Bush stated "Knowing what I know today we still would have gone on into Iraq. … The decision I made is the right decision. The world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power."[78]

In asserting a link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda, the Bush Administration focused special attention on alleged ties between Saddam Hussein and Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whom Secretary of State Powell called a "collaborator of Osama bin Laden."[79] Soon after the start of the war, however, evidence of such ties was discredited by multiple US intelligence agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Department's Inspector General's Office. A CIA report in early October 2004 "found no clear evidence of Iraq harboring Abu Musab al-Zarqawi."[80] More broadly, the CIA's Kerr Group summarized in 2004 that despite "a 'purposely aggressive approach' in conducting exhaustive and repetitive searches for such links... [the US] Intelligence Community remained firm in its assessment that no operational or collaborative relationship existed."[81] Despite these findings, US Vice President Dick Cheney has continued to assert that a link existed between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which has drawn criticism from members of the intelligence community and leading Democrats.[82] As of the invasion, the State Department listed 45 countries, including the United States where Al Qaeda was active. Iraq was not one of them.[83]

The eventual lack of evidence linking the Saddam Hussein government and Al Qaeda led many war critics to allege that the Bush Administration purposely fabricated such links to strengthen the case for the invasion.[84] These claims were supported by the July 2005 release of the so-called Downing Street Memo, in which Richard Dearlove (then head of British foreign intelligence service MI6) wrote that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed [by the US] around the policy" of removing Saddam Hussein from power.[65] In addition, in his April 2007 report Acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble found that the Defense Department's Office of Special Plans—run by then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith, a close ally of Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld—purposely manipulated evidence to strengthen the case for war.[5] The Inspector General's report also highlighted the role of members of the Iraqi National Congress, a group headed by Ahmad Chalabi, in providing false intelligence about connections with Al-Qaeda to build support for a US invasion.[85][86]

In making its case for the invasion of Iraq, the Bush Administration also referenced Saddam Hussein's relationships with terrorist organizations other than Al-Qaeda. Saddam Hussein provided financial assistance to the families of Palestinians killed in the conflict – including as much as $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers, some of whom were working with militant organizations in the Middle East such as Hamas.[87]

Abdul Rahman Yasin, a suspect detained shortly after the 1993 US World Trade Center Bombing attacks, fled upon release into Iraq. Shortly after release, the FBI had discovered evidence linking him to the creation of the bomb. After the invasion, Iraqi government official documents translated from Arabic to English described Saddam's regime provided monthly payments to Yasin while residing in the United States. Yasin is on the FBI's most wanted terrorists list, and is still at large.[88][89]

In the end, by Article 1 of the UN Charter, the United Nations has the responsibility: "To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.[100] By UN Charter Article 39, the responsibility for this determination lies with the Security Council.[100]

US Vice President Dick Cheney, who called the sanctions "the most intrusive system of arms control in history",[101] cited the breakdown of the sanctions as one rationale for the Iraq war.[102] Accepting a controversial large estimate of casualties due to sanctions,[103] Walter Russell Mead argued on behalf of such a war as a better alternative than continuing the sanctions regime, since "Each year of containment is a new Gulf War."[104] However, economist Michael Spagat "argue[s] that the contention that sanctions had caused the deaths of more than half a million children is [as were weapons of mass destruction claims] very likely to be wrong."[105]

In 2008, President Bush issued a signing statement, declaring that he would ignore any law that prohibited using federal funds "to establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq" or "to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq."[106] According to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the United States didn't need to invade Iraq to control the oil. The New York Times reports that in February 2003, Baghdad had offered to give the US first priority as it related to Iraq oil rights, as part of a deal to avert an impending invasion. The overtures intrigued the Bush administration but were ultimately rebuffed.[107] The primary reason for invading Iraq, according to those attending NSC briefings in 2002, was "to create a demonstration model" to deter anyone with the temerity to "flout the authority of the United States" in any way.[108]

Bush's Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said that Bush's first two National Security Council meetings included a discussion of invading Iraq. He was given briefing materials entitled "Plan for post-Saddam Iraq," which envisioned peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals, and divvying up Iraq's oil wealth. A Pentagon document dated March 5, 2001, was titled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield contracts," and included a map of potential areas for exploration.[109]

In July 2003, the Polish foreign minister, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, said, "We have never hidden our desire for Polish oil companies to finally have access to sources of commodities." This remark came after a group of Polish firms had just signed a deal with Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. Cimoszewicz stated that access to Iraq's oilfields "is our ultimate objective".[110]

One report by BBC journalist Gregory Palast citing unnamed "insiders" alleged that the US "called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields"[111] and planned for a coup d'état in Iraq long before September 11.[111] It was also alleged by the BBC's Greg Palast that the "new plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the OPEC cartel through massive increases in production above OPEC quotas",[111] but in reality Iraq oil production decreased following the Iraq War.[112]

Speaking at the Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law in 2008, Chuck Hagel, the former United States Secretary of Defense, defended Greenspan's comments regarding oil as a motivation for the invasion of Iraq: "People say we're not fighting for oil. Of course we are."[113] He later retracted that statement. General John Abizaid, CENTCOM commander from 2003 until 2007, said of the Iraq war during a round table discussion at Stanford University in 2008, "Look it's... first of all I think it's really important to understand the dynamics that are going on in the Middle East, and of course it's about oil, it's very much about oil and we can't really deny that."[114][115]

Many critics have focused upon administration officials' past relationship with energy sector corporations. Both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were formerly CEOs of oil and oil-related companies such as Arbusto, Harken Energy, Spectrum 7, and Halliburton. Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq and even before the War on Terror, the administration had prompted anxiety over whether the private sector ties of cabinet members (including National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, former director of Chevron, and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, former head of Tom Brown Inc.) would affect their judgment on energy policy.[116]

Prior to the war, the CIA saw Iraqi oil production and illicit oil sales as Iraq's key method of financing increasing weapons of mass destruction capability. The CIA's October 2002 unclassified white paper on "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs," states on page 1 under the "Key Judgments, Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs" heading that "Iraq's growing ability to sell oil illicitly increases Baghdad's capabilities to finance weapons of mass destruction programs".[117]

Iraq holds the world's fifth-largest proven oil reserves at 141 billion barrels (2.24×10¹⁰ m³),[118] with increasing exploration expected to enlarge them beyond 200 billion barrels (3.2×10¹⁰ m³).[119] For comparison, Venezuela—the largest proven source of oil in the world—has 298 billion barrels (4.74×10¹⁰ m³) of proven oil reserves.[118]

Organizations such as the Global Policy Forum (GPF) have asserted that Iraq's oil is "the central feature of the political landscape" there, and that as a result of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, "'friendly' companies expect to gain most of the lucrative oil deals that will be worth hundreds of billions of dollars in profits in the coming decades." According to the GPF, US influence over the 2005 Constitution of Iraq has made sure it "contains language that guarantees a major role for foreign companies".[119][120]

A proven oil reserves map of the world (CIA- The World Factbook, 2009).

Oil exerts tremendous economic and political influence worldwide, although the line between political and economic influence is not always distinct. The importance of oil to national security is unlike that of any other commodity:

Modern warfare particularly depends on oil, because virtually all weapons systems rely on oil-based fuel – tanks, trucks, armored vehicles, self-propelled artillery pieces, airplanes, and naval ships. For this reason, the governments and general staffs of powerful nations seek to ensure a steady supply of oil during wartime, to fuel oil-hungry military forces in far-flung operational theaters. Such governments view their companies' global interests as synonymous with the national interest and they readily support their companies' efforts to control new production sources, to overwhelm foreign rivals, and to gain the most favorable pipeline routes and other transportation and distribution channels.[121]

Critics of the Iraq War contend that US officials and representatives from the private sector were planning just this kind of mutually supportive relationship as early as 2001, when the James Baker III Institute for Public Policy and the Council on Foreign Relations produced "Strategic Energy Policy: Challenges for the 21st Century," a report describing the long-term threat of energy crises such as blackouts and rising fuel prices then playing havoc with the state of California. The report recommended a comprehensive review of US military, energy, economic, and political policy toward Iraq "with the aim to lowering anti-Americanism in the Middle East and elsewhere, and set the groundwork to eventually ease Iraqi oil-field investment restrictions."[122] The report's urgent tone stood in contrast to the relatively calm speech Chevron CEO Kenneth T. Derr had given the Commonwealth Club of California two years earlier, before the California electricity crisis, where he said:

It might surprise you to learn that even though Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas—reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to—I fully agree with the sanctions we have imposed on Iraq.[123]

Post-Iraq invasion opinion polls conducted in Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, and Turkey showed that the majority in each country tended to "doubt the sincerity of the War on Terrorism," which they characterized instead as "an effort to control Mideast oil and to dominate the world."[124] Although there has been disagreement about where the alleged will to control and dominate originates, skeptics of the War on Terror have pointed early[125] and often[126] to the Project for a New American Century, a neoconservative think tank established in 1997 by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. The organization made plain its position on oil, territory, and the use of force in series of publications, including:

• a 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton:

It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard. [...] The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing.[127]

• a September 2000 report on foreign policy:

"American forces, along with British and French units...represent the long-term commitment of the United States and its major allies to a region of vital importance. Indeed, the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."[128]

• a May 2001 call to "Liberate Iraq":

Twice since 1980, Saddam has tried to dominate the Middle East by waging wars against neighbors that could have given him control of the region's oil wealth and the identity of the Arab world.[129]

• a 2004 apologia:

His clear and unwavering ambition, an ambition nurtured and acted upon across three decades, was to dominate the Middle East, both economically and militarily, by attempting to acquire the lion's share of the region's oil and by intimidating or destroying anyone who stood in his way. This, too, was a sufficient reason to remove him from power.[130]

Of 18 signatories to the 1998 PNAC letter, 11 would later occupy positions in President Bush's administration: Elliott Abrams, Richard Armitage, John R. Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, Richard Perle, Peter W. Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Robert B. Zoellick.[127] Administration officials Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen, and Lewis Libby were signatories to the 1997 PNAC "Statement of Principles."[131]

Just after US invasion of Afghanistan, the London Observer[132] and The Guardian [132] reported plans to invade Iraq and seize its oil reserves around Basra and use the proceeds to finance Iraqi oppositions in the south and the north. Later the US intelligence community denied these claims as incredible and that they have no plan to attack Iraq.[132] On October 14, 2001, The Guardian reported:

"The group, which some in the State Department and on Capitol Hill refer to as the 'Wolfowitz cabal', after Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz, was yesterday laying the ground for a strategy that envisions the use of air support and the occupation of southern Iraq with American ground troops to install an Iraqi opposition group based in London at the helm of a new government. Under the plan, American troops would also seize the oil fields around Basra, in south-eastern Iraq, and sell the oil to finance the Iraqi opposition in the south and the Kurds in the north, one senior official said." [133]

Ever since the establishment of the financial institutions of the Bretton Woods system in 1944 the US dollar has been used as the world's principal reserve currency and allowed the US government to operate at a deficit with limited consequences. After years of deficit spending the Nixon Shock in 1971 ended the convertibility of US dollars to gold, and after the floating of the US dollar 1973 left it unsupported by a fixed exchange rate, the US needed another monetary system to bring stability to the markets.[134] They achieved this when Saudi Arabia agreed in 1974 to price their oil exclusively in US dollars in return for military equipment and protection.[135]

By 1975, all of the oil-producing nations of OPEC had agreed to price their oil in dollars and to invest surplus oil proceeds in US government debt securities in exchange for similar offers by the US[136] However by mid-2000 news outlets carried articles about Saddam's efforts to sell oil on markets exclusively in euros.[137][138]

Several commentators writing contemporaneously with the buildup to the invasion[139][140][141] linked Iraq's Nov 2000 re-denomination of oil from USD to euros and the possibility of more widespread adoption of the euro as an oil pricing standard to the risk that that would place on the post-Bretton Woods use of the USD as the international reserve currency and the impact that that would have on the US economy, and theorised that one of the fundamental purposes for war in Iraq would be to force Iraq to revert to pricing its oil in USD. In the aftermath of the invasion, other commentators concurred[142][134] and reiterated earlier observations about similar threats posed by (and to) Venezuela, Syria and Iran.

In 2002, responding to a question about coveting oil fields, George Bush said "Those are the wrong impressions. I have a deep desire for peace. That's what I have a desire for. And freedom for the Iraqi people. See, I don't like a system where people are repressed through torture and murder in order to keep a dictator in place. That troubles me deeply. And so the Iraqi people must hear this loud and clear, that this country never has any intention to conquer anybody." [143]

Tony Blair stated that the theory that the Iraq invasion had "some[thing] to do with oil" was a "conspiracy theory"; "Let me first deal with the conspiracy theory that this is somehow to do with oil...The very reason why we are taking the action that we are taking is nothing to do with oil or any of the other conspiracy theories put forward."[144]

Then Australian Prime Minister John Howard has dismissed on multiple occasions the role of oil in the Iraq Invasion: "We didn't go there because of oil and we don't remain there because of oil."[145] In early 2003 John Howard stated, "No criticism is more outrageous than the claim that United States behaviour is driven by a wish to take control of Iraq's oil reserves."[146]

2008 Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain was forced to clarify his comments suggesting the Iraq war involved US reliance on foreign oil. "My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East," McCain said. To clarify his comments, McCain explained that "the word 'again' was misconstrued, I want us to remove our dependency on foreign oil for national security reasons, and that's all I mean."[147]

Scholar Jeff Colgan writes that "Even years after the 2003 Iraq War, there is still no consensus on the degree to which oil played a role in that war."[148]

One of the rationales that the Bush Administration employed periodically during the run-up to the Iraq war is that deposing Saddam Hussein and installing a democratic government in Iraq would promote democracy in other Middle Eastern countries.[157][158] The United States also proclaims that monarchies Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the military ruled Pakistan are allies of America, despite the human rights abuses and subversion of democracy attributed to them respectively. As Vice President Dick Cheney argued in an August 2002 speech to the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, "When the gravest of threats are eliminated, the freedom-loving peoples of the region will have a chance to promote the values that can bring lasting peace."[159] At a 2003 Veterans Day address, President Bush stated:[160]

Our mission in Iraq and Afghanistan is clear to our service members—and clear to our enemies. Our men and women are fighting to secure the freedom of more than 50 million people who recently lived under two of the cruelest dictatorships on earth. Our men and women are fighting to help democracy and peace and justice rise in a troubled and violent region. Our men and women are fighting terrorist enemies thousands of miles away in the heart and center of their power, so that we do not face those enemies in the heart of America.

US General Jay Garner, who was in charge of planning and administering post-war reconstruction in Iraq, compared the US occupation of Iraq to the Philippine model in a 2004 interview in National Journal: "Look back on the Philippines around the turn of the 20th century: they were a coaling station for the navy, and that allowed us to keep a great presence in the Pacific. That's what Iraq is for the next few decades: our coaling station that gives us great presence in the Middle East", "One of the most important things we can do right now is start getting basing rights with (the Iraqi authorities)", "I hope they're there a long time.... And I think we'll have basing rights in the north and basing rights in the south ... we'd want to keep at least a brigade", Garner added.[161]

Also, the House report accompanying the emergency spending legislation said the money was "of a magnitude normally associated with permanent bases".[162]

Nabil Shaath told the BBC that according to minutes of a conference with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, Bush said, "God inspired me to hit al Qaeda, and so I hit it. And I had the inspiration to hit Saddam, and so I hit him."[163] Haaretz provided a similar translation of the minutes. When an Arabist at the Washington Post translated the same transcript, Bush was said to have indicated that God inspired him to, "end the tyranny in Iraq," instead.[164]

In a 2003 interview, Jacques Chirac, President of France at that time, affirmed that President George W. Bush asked him to send troops to Iraq to stop Gog and Magog, the "Bible's satanic agents of the Apocalypse." According to Chirac, the American leader appealed to their "common faith" (Christianity) and told him: "Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins."[165][166][167]

David Harrison claims in the Telegraph to have found secret documents that purport to show Russian President Vladimir Putin offering the use of assassins to Saddam's Iraqi regime to kill Western targets on November 27, 2000.[168]

On October 12, 2002, Newsmax wrote that CNSNews correspondent Jeff Johnson reported US Senator Spector wanted a probe of the Oklahoma City bombing link to Iraq after receiving 22 affidavits by Oklahoma residents identifying 8 Middle Eastern men, including a former Iraqi Republican Guard (Hussain Al-Hussaini) from former KFOR-TV reporter Jayna Davis.[169] Jayna Davis had theorised on the purported links between the Oklahoma City bombing, Iraq, and Al-Qaeda.[170]

Abdul Rahman Yasin, a suspect detained shortly after the 1993 US World Trade Center Bombing attacks, fled upon release into Iraq. Shortly after release, the FBI had discovered evidence linking him to the creation of the bomb. After the invasion, Iraqi government official documents translated from Arabic to English described Saddam's regime provided monthly payments to Yasin while in residing in the United States. Yasin is on the FBI's most wanted terrorists list, and is still at large.[88][89]

John Lumpkin, Associated Press Writer, consolidates statements made by Vice President Cheney concerning the 1993 WTC bombing and Iraq. Cheney indicated Saddam's Iraqi government claimed to have FBI Fugitive Yasin, alleged participant in the mixing of the chemicals making the bomb used in the 1993 WTC attack, in an Iraqi prison. During negotiations in the weeks prior to the invasion of Iraq, Saddam refused to extradite him.[170]

Fox News claimed that evidence found in Iraq after the invasion was used to stop the attempted assassination of the Pakistani ambassador in New York with a shoulder fired rocket.[171]

US government officials have claimed that after the invasion, Yemen and Jordan stopped Iraqi terrorist attacks against Western targets in those nations. US intelligence also warned 10 other countries that small groups of Iraqi intelligence agents may be readying similar attacks.[172]

After the Beslan school hostage crisis, public school layouts and crisis plans were retrieved on a disk recovered during an Iraqi raid and had raised concerns in the United States. The information on the disks was "all publicly available on the Internet" and US officials "said it was unclear who downloaded the information and stressed there is no evidence of any specific threats involving the schools."[173]

The operations in Iraq came about as a result of the US attempting to put pressure on Saudi Arabia. Much of the funding for Al-Qaeda came from sources in Saudi Arabia through channels left over from the Afghan War. The US, wanting to staunch such financial support, pressured the Saudi leadership to cooperate with the West. The Saudis in power, fearing an Islamic backlash if they cooperated with the US which could push them from power, refused. In order to put pressure on Saudi Arabia to cooperate, the invasion of Iraq was conceived. Such an action would demonstrate the power of the US military, put US troops near to Saudi Arabia, and demonstrate that the US did not need Saudi allies to project itself in the Middle East.[174]