While I do think that energy resources play a role in American/middle-east foreign relations, I think it was actually a fairly minor consideration in the war in Iraq.
Oil prices didn’t really start to increase rapidly until George W. Bush’s second term, and they didn’t hit their extreme peak until the end of his second term, so the incentive to start a war for oil wasn’t particularly strong when the Iraq war was starting; to put it in perspective the average price for a barrel of oil in 2003 was under $28. People often ignore that the reasons why gigantic SUVs were so popular for most of the last decade was that energy costs (when adjusted for inflation) were fairly close to the costs in the "good old days" when muscle cars were popular.
I personally believe that the reason people believe this (moronic) myth is because the reasons for going to war were diverse and not well explained. Dozens of groups within the government and external to the government were pushing their own agenda trying to encourage this war; and very few of these agendas were brought forward. For example, CNN was spawned in the first Iraq war and saw major boosts in ratings with major events like the beginning of the war in Afghanistan; while it probably will never be demonstrated, it is highly likely that the continuous coverage to argue for the war from CNN was (at least in part) driven by a desire to get ratings.
