again, the problem is in order to install a proper government you need to have a viable economy. oil backs the economy in most of iraq(kurdish areas have other resources like farmland if i recall) and it adds a drastic amount of money to the government coffers to afford infrastructure and staff. if you undermine the economy so severely you are undermining your success because you're hurting the average joe, not just the armed forces. shit, its basic economics.
the invasion was perfect. the post-invasion management was not. they marched across the country in a matter of days. they secured major objectives. they secured the nation. the one thing they failed in was post invasion; they fired the military and sent a bunch of unemployed, military trained veterans to find work elsewhere, which formed the backbone of the insurgency.
you forget that hussein was taken out of the picture early on.. actually i think the night before we officially began. he was in a building that was obliterated, but survived and went immediately into hiding. his sons were hunted and killed in combat. they had the deck of cards indicating top personnel to be captured and over the course of the first few months of war you heard all the time of people on the list being captured or kia.
in the mean time you have groups of people hunting wmd's. you have marines fighting insurgency in towns like basra. etc etc.
whats wrong with multiple objectives? we have the people trained to do different things and we utilized some to secure high value objectives, some to secure towns, some to rebuild infrastructure, etc. you cannot tell me that we invaded, secured oil fields and facilities, and then sat on our butts because that is not how it happened.
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This is not a medieval invasion. The US were not going to drill and use the oil as they went as a medieval army would use farms and wells.
They set fire to them because they knew it was why they were there. No oil, no invasion. Get rid of the oil.
spite and frustration. frustrating and slowing down the army is something you want to do if you intend to have time to regroup after a retreat. you cant "get rid of the oil", so that has no bearing here. destroying the facility to pump it or process it does nothing but increase frustration. they did it in kuwait and they even did it during the current iraq war. wiki states that 44 oil well facilities were destroyed in the invasion and 400 were rigged for destruction.