I am aware that a few years before the invasion, Iraq started selling oil in Euros instead of dollars, and I understand that the preservation of the petrodollar was a reason for the destruction of Libya. Also, there must have been a reason to go to war with Iraq the first time in 1990 and to then wage economic warfare against Iraq.
I’ve heard some stuff about the war being really against Iran, but that doesn’t really make much sense because Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a counterweight against Iran in the region (and in fact the imperialists sponsored an Iraqi invasion of Iran during the 1980s).
Of course, the WMD lie and attempts to link the Iraqi government of the time to al-Qaeda (which seems to just be an imperialist asset anyway) and 9/11 was just a way to find an excuse for the invasion.
The weapons manufacturers, private military corporations, and many other corporations profited greatly from the war, but there must have been a reason that Iraq specifically was targeted.
I may be taking nonsense here, but they seemed to learn propaganda lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan, too. They had believed that ‘everyone’ accepted the end of history thesis. They thought that all westerners would jump on the cause. They didn’t seem to expect millions of people marching. The protesters failed, of course. But since then, the US pretends it’s wars aren’t really wars.
It’s nuanced, but Libya and Syria got so much less press attention and public debate. They were framed in the same way as movies: “we have to go in, but we’re only going to do this one quick thing and then we’ll be gone and everything will be fixed”. Maybe Iraq was similar (removing WMDs), but there was a feeling at the time that it would be a full scale war. The bombing was even shown on the news and celebrated. Idk, it feels like later wars were framed as ‘conflicts’ and the media tried not to mention them too much, so as not to motivate any strong anti-war opposition.