"well if you believe the Iraq war was for oil, you still have to reconcile with the fact that the haliburton stock price and all the intervention didn't come until well into the occupation."
Looking at the stock of a single oil company isn't very telling because there are many more factors that are going to affect a single company than the price of oil. Halliburton could have had debt issues and bankruptcy fears. It could have had a scandal. It could have had a spill. I don't know, and I'm not concerned enough to investigate it. But, the historical price of oil is available for free and that's what would be directly affected by the invasion and disruption of Iraqi oil production. The price per barrel was $41.39 in March 2003, the month the war started. By the end of 2005, the price had shot up to $75.96 per barrel, a 83.5% increase less than 2 years into the war. The price topped out at $156.48 per barrel in 2008, a 278% increase from when the war started 5 years before. The likes of these kind of gains hadn't been seen since the 1970s when OPEC cut the supply. This war potentially created hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions, in extra profit for the oil companies. In the same way that many factors affect a stock price, however, many factors affect the price of oil. Not all of the price increase was caused by the war, but you and I both know what happens to the price of a good when supply shrinks, or even is perceived as having the potential to shrink. I don't think that it is debatable the war contributed to the price increase, the only question would be how much, though that isn't the point.
"i'm not saying everything has been fine and dandy in the middle east since, but the major players who have been killing people have been ISIS, who people forget had been around since '98, and only grew to power once we LEFT Iraq."
And if we hadn't gone in in the first place, they wouldn't have had the opportunity to fill the vacuum. Alternatively, we could have assumed indefinite management of the country, but people want to have their cake and eat it too.