>War is the most harmful of all actions that man can perpetrate on other men. As such it should only be done with excellent and "pure" reasons. Wanting what someone else has is NEVER an excellent or pure reason, regardless of the beneficiaries.
>
>2000+ American families have lost kin for this fight for oil. 18000+ service folk have come home maimed physically for this fight for oil. Who knows how many have been mentally damamged for this fight for oil?!
>Then there's the Iraqi side. How many Iraqi lives were lost in the war for oil and its aftermath? How many Iraqis have been permanently maimed as a result of the fight for oil? How many Iraqi families are now victims of kidnapping for ransom as a result of the fight for oil?

IT IS NOT ABOUT OIL!!!!!

Sorry for the shouting, but I get so frustrated by this. If it was all about oil, we should have taken the Saudis out. (I think we should on general principle, but that's another thing...)

Here's an op-ed with some sections that illustrates, at least in my opinion, why we are fighting: Looking Back at Iraq

Our soldiers fought for the chance of a democracy; that fact is uncontestable. Before they came to Iraq, there was a fascist dictatorship. Now, after three elections, there is an indigenous democratic government for the first time in the history of the Middle East. True, thousands of Iraqis have died publicly in the resulting sectarian mess; but thousands were dying silently each year under Saddam—with no hope that their sacrifice would ever result in the first steps that we have already long passed.

Our soldiers also removed a great threat to the United States. Again, the crisis brewing over Iran reminds us of what Iraq would have reemerged as. Like Iran, Saddam reaped petroprofits, sponsored terror, and sought weapons of mass destruction. But unlike Iran, he had already attacked four of his neighbors, gassed thousands of his own, and violated every agreement he had ever signed. There would have been no nascent new democracy in Iran {I think he meant Iraq - DRL} that might some day have undermined Saddam, and, again unlike Iran, no internal dissident movement that might have come to power through a revolution or peaceful evolution.

Highlights are mine.