Remember the lengths the Bush administration went to counter the argument that the real reason we invaded Iraq in 2003 was the oil? It was about weapons of mass destruction, until there turned out to be no WMDs. Then it was about bringing democracy to the Middle East, until that turned out to be harder than we thought it would be. Then it was about rebuilding Iraq, which wouldn’t have needed it if we hadn’t blown the place up to begin with. Then it was about fighting terrorism, which Iraq had had no part in exporting to the rest of the world in the first place.
It was about anything at all except the oil, even after it was revealed that the first thing Vice President Dick Cheney did at the very first meeting of the Bush cabinet after he took office was to pass around a map of Iraq showing its oil reserves divided up between major United States oil companies. This was in February of 2001, months before the attacks of 9/11, and more than two years before the first American units would cross the Kuwait border in the invasion of Iraq.
Oil had nothing to do with it, we were told. Our hands were clean. Our motives were pure.