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Yeah, I was opposed to the war, but I always thought the "we're actually in this for oil" argument was pretty bunk and did disservice to the cause. There were enough logical arguments to be made against the war, screaming about oil just lumps the anti-war crowd in with the tin foil hats brigade.
If the bushies were really in bed with the oil companies, there are a lot of things they could have done a long time ago to enrich themselves. Ending sanctions against Iran where today french oil companies can invest but we can't. Simmilarlly, Regan and the first Bush took a very harsh stance towards Lybia, another country where US companies missed oil opprotunities. This Bush did the same until recently, but I think that policy change was fairly obviously motivated by Lybia's new stance on nukes rather then oil. And simply making peace with Saddam would have been a much easier way to get oil concessions then invading.
Oil is important in the sense that we wouldn't be in the middle east if there was no oil there. For one thing, without oil it would be a backwater that posed no threat to anyone. For another, if access to middle eastern oil was cut (by say, a nuclear attack on kuwait, or a madman dictator taking control of most of the world's oil supply) it would lead to massive economic distress throughout the world. Which equals high unemployment, lots of poverty, i.e. not something either liberals of conservatives want. We stay engaged in the persian gulf to prevent this potential catastrophe, not to engineer financial gain for any particular company or family.
/end rant, feel free to delete this if it crosses any line
Seriously though, there are many factors outside of our control that determine the price of oil. OPEC. Venezuela. Russia. Demand. The Iraq ar had no impact on any of these except to maybe piss off OPEC and make them want to take a stand against us. Iraq's contribution to the global oil supply is so small that it would be impossible for the coalition to control oil prices even if they wanted to.
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