...why exactly was murica forced to take action in Iraq? They had weapons of mass destruction, right?
The Bush family is an oilman family. One of the main reasons was the aim to gain control over the oil and they are now strongly criticized for this. (a bit late though)
Then, there is also the aim to export the democracy that permit to export the the market. This is a neverending aim of usa, since is the base of the whole government & social structure.
At that time the Iraq leader Saddam was improving the country with many socialistic programs, but doing so he was getting away from the Usa road.
Since there were a few reasons to call a regular war, Usa declared that there were the chanche that Irwq was arming himself with chemical weapon and Usa did a talk, showing a glass of antrace. It was then prooved to be sugar.
They also claimed that civils were oppressed and he was helping terrorism. All these things was then prooved as not true.
None the less, usa, italy and britain joined the war (and a strong polemic raised in the eu)
It was called a "peace war" because we were officially going to prevent Iraq to do "bad things".
Since the party have gone down, Iraq have lost his integrity and the previous form of isis (al-quaeda) had the chance to get bigger. Then they splitted and Isis have born.
A really short sunto of history.