War *is* political machinations. That's the entire thing about war. It's politics that leads to people killing each other. The entire point is political gain or the diminishment of the other party's political power.
In the case of Iraq, it was neither: the US made up a reason.
Engender sympathy for US troops? Excuse the fuck me? When you look up the casualty statistics for the Iraq war you'll find US deaths, but you could barely *find* Iraqi victims, civilian or resistance or insurgent or terrorist. They're all defined "terrorist" or "collateral".