We went to war in Iraq because the people running our country at that time had a misguided view of how the world works, and a misguided view of what role America can realistically play, and thought that removing Saddam and installing a democratic government in Iraq would accomplish something good for America and the region (and, to unknown but probably differing degrees, for themselves and their buddies). I don't think that the term "neo-conservatism" has much descriptive power--in fact I think it's misleading--but that's what people use to talk about this kind of ideology, so whatever. That kind of thinking took an iron grip of the Bush white house after 9/11. It's intrinsically arrogant, which is bad enough, but in this case it was sadly coupled with incompetence and bad forecasting of what Iraq would look like without Saddam's government.
I do think that George W. Bush genuinely and honestly believed he was doing a good thing for the US, Iraq, and the region and the world by removing Saddam. I do also think that Dick Cheney believed the same thing, to some degree. As I said, I think that the ideas that underpinned these beliefs were and are terribly misguided. Neo-conservatism holds that using American power to spread democracy and economic liberalism is good for America, good for the countries these things are spread to, and good for the world. Its a nice theory but it's just not realistic. Bad intel about the WMDs (which the historical record indicates that Bush personally did believe) helped the case a lot too.
One theory that doesn't hold up, in my view, is that the war was predominantly about oil. It's obviously impossible to talk about military operations in a country like Iraq without considering the issue of the oil, but I've seen no evidence that the actual decision to go to war was made based on considerations of oil. It's easy to speculate, as we've seen in this thread and many other places, but speculation without evidence doesn't mean much. Taco, your idea is interesting, but I don't think it holds up. I've never seen any evidence that the possibility of Iraq selling their oil for Euros caused that much consternation for the US government.
Gismo: As for Saddam being one of the more "liberal" Middle Eastern leaders, I don't know if that's the word I'd use. His government was certainly one of the region's more secular, though; definitely no connection there between him and AQ or other Islamic fundamentalists groups, unlike the governments of several other Middle Eastern states. Ba'ath parties have always been explicitly secular and pan-Arabist, which puts them at the opposite end of the spectrum from, say, the Saudis. I assume this is what you meant?
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