Who benefited from the Iraq war?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/06/us/2004-campaign-vice-president-cheney-tax-plan-86-would-have-raised-gas-prices.html

In October 1986, when Dick Cheney was the lone congressman from energy-rich Wyoming, he introduced legislation to create a new import tax that would have caused the price of oil, and ultimately the price of gasoline paid by drivers, to soar by billions of dollars per year.

”Let us rid ourselves of the fiction that low oil prices are somehow good for the United States,” Mr. Cheney, who is now vice president, said shortly after introducing the legislation.

Oil prices had plunged to $15 from nearly $40 a barrel in the early 1980’s, as Saudi Arabia flooded world markets, and Mr. Cheney argued the tax was needed to stabilize oil-state economies devastated as a result.

So we had a vice president who was on record being against low oil prices who while he was in office saw oil reach record sustained price hikes.

Under Vice President Dick Cheney, hater of low oil prices, the price of gasoline increased from $1.60 per gallon when he took office in January 2001 to $4.40 per gallon in July 2008, a jump of 275 percent.

So maybe the Iraq invasion was to get oil prices to rise rather than the common belief Cheney wanted cheap Iraqi oil?

Is this proof that this is what motivated Cheney’s policies as VP? No, but it does help answer “cui bono”. If so then “Mission Accomplished”, indeed.