The Kurds are our greatest ally in Iraq and they most definitely have lots of oil in addition to letting US operate on their territory in exchange for protecting the oil interests. I suppose you could say that's not us taking the oil but we still get value like we had taken the oil and provided fair market rate to host bases in exchange.

Saddam was already selling the oil at fair market rate.

I said fair market rate to host bases. Saddam was definitely not leasing us military at fair market rate in Iraq (or Syria for that matter, where Kurds also host US base).

I see that now. Sorry for my sloppy reading.

I highly suggest you look into the Afghan pipeline project.

I know about this one, it's eh. There are pipelines everywhere and no smoking gun.

The point is that there are certainly oil interests in Afghanistan. To act like there aren’t is inaccurate.

Ok, to put it this way, we'd have gone into Afghanistan with or without the possibility of a pipeline.

Oh also they didn't even set up that pipeline during all the time we were there