What was the war in Iraq about?

What was the war in Iraq about?  According to James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, "it was strategically about setting up a police station in the middle of a very large bad neighborhood.  It was also about dividing the Islamic world physically in half to create a buffer between the aggressive gangs on the east side of the police station (Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan) and the politically touchy gangs on the other side (Arabia,  Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Libya, and of course, the anomaly Israel).  On a closer scale, the Iraq war was an attempt to establish a forward base adjacent to Iran and Arabia and to moderate and influence the behavior of both of them, to discourage adventures by Iran, and to be ready in case of trouble in Arabia.  One of the first things the US did after invading Iraq in 2003 was to station two armored divisions on the Iraq-Saudi Arabian border. 

And then there is the issue of Iraq itself.  Iraq possess the second-largest oil reserves after Arabia.  Replacing the Saddam regime with a less hostile and erratic government was obviously a high order of business for the United States where future oil supplies were concerned...of course it was about the oil".