Why?

So why, exactly, did the US invade Iraq five years ago this week? Jim Lobe grapples with multiple rationales and comes to this conclusion:

In retrospect, it seems clear that Iraq had long been seen by this group [the neocons], which became empowered first by Bush's election and then supercharged by 9/11, as the first, easiest and most available step toward achieving a "Pax Americana" that would not only establish the US once and for all as the dominant power in the region, but whose geostrategic implications for aspiring "peer competitors" would be global in scope.

For the neoconservative and the Christian Right members of this group, who were its most eager and ubiquitous war boosters, Israel would also be a major beneficiary of an invasion...

Indeed, getting rid of Hussein and occupying Iraq would not only tighten Israel's hold on Arab territories, in this view; it could also threaten the survival of the Arab and Islamic worlds' most formidable weapon against Israel – OPEC – by flooding the world market with Iraqi oil and forcing the commodity's price down to historic lows.

That's how it looked five years ago anyway.