We go to war for oil, not because despots supposedly gas their own people, according to the ones who make war happen:

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, in 2007:

People say we’re not fighting for oil. Of course we are. They talk about America’s national interest. What the hell do you think they’re talking about? We’re not there for figs.

I wasn’t thinking figs either but I was running out of other options.

4 Star General John Abizaid – the former commander of CENTCOM with responsibility for Iraq:

Of course it’s about oil, it’s very much about oil, and we can’t really deny that.

John McCain, while running for president and the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, someone privy to a lot of information about our military, had this to say about why we have been sending our kids off to be killed:

My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will — that will then prevent us — that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.

According to Joshua Rovner, Chair in International Politics and National Security at Southern Methodist University:

the United States has an enduring interest in protecting the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. It has performed that role for nearly forty years.