WMD? Mushroom Cloud? Spreading Democracy? Oil?


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FilthyRich's picture

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

And wrong.

Saddam Hussein was preparing to sell oil in EUROS instead of dollars. The US $7+ Trillion debt is backed by oil. Once Saudi Arabia agreed on ONLY the US DOLLAR for oil & OPEC followed suit in the early '70s, Saddam's threat to sell his oil in Euros would undermine the value of the Dollar. The Big Oil Companies simply could not have that. We now see Iran is planning to take that very step.

To get the full picture please read the entire article. Here are some excerpts:

The Proposed Iranian Oil Bourse

Krassimir Petrov, Ph. D.
January 17, 2006

Abstract: the proposed Iranian Oil Bourse will accelerate the fall of the American Empire.

I. Economics of Empires
A nation-state taxes its own citizens, while an empire taxes other nation-states. The history of empires, from Greek and Roman, to Ottoman and British, teaches that the economic foundation of every single empire is the taxation of other nations. The imperial ability to tax has always rested on a better and stronger economy, and as a consequence, a better and stronger military. One part of the subject taxes went to improve the living standards of the empire; the other part went to strengthen the military dominance necessary to enforce the collection of those taxes.

~snip~
For the first time in history, in the twentieth century, America was able to tax the world indirectly, through inflation. It did not enforce the direct payment of taxes like all of its predecessor empires did, but distributed instead its own fiat currency, the U.S. Dollar, to other nations in exchange for goods with the intended consequence of inflating and devaluing those dollars and paying back later each dollar with less economic goods - the difference capturing the U.S. imperial tax. Here is how this happened.

~snip~
In 1971, as it became clearer and clearer that the U.S Government would not be able to buy back its dollars in gold, it made in 1972-73 an iron-clad arrangement with Saudi Arabia to support the power of the House of Saud in exchange for accepting only U.S. dollars for its oil. The rest of OPEC was to follow suit and also accept only dollars. Because the world had to buy oil from the Arab oil countries, it had the reason to hold dollars as payment for oil. Because the world needed ever increasing quantities of oil at ever increasing oil prices, the world's demand for dollars could only increase. Even though dollars could no longer be exchanged for gold, they were now exchangeable for oil.

~snip~
Many have criticized Bush for staging the war in Iraq in order to seize Iraqi oil fields. However, those critics can't explain why Bush would want to seize those fields - he could simply print dollars for nothing and use them to get all the oil in the world that he needs. He must have had some other reason to invade Iraq.

History teaches that an empire should go to war for one of two reasons: (1) to defend itself or (2) benefit from war; if not, as Paul Kennedy illustrates in his magisterial The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, a military overstretch will drain its economic resources and precipitate its collapse. Economically speaking, in order for an empire to initiate and conduct a war, its benefits must outweigh its military and social costs. Benefits from Iraqi oil fields are hardly worth the long-term, multi-year military cost. Instead, Bush must have went into Iraq to defend his Empire. Indeed, this is the case: two months after the United States invaded Iraq, the Oil for Food Program was terminated, the Iraqi Euro accounts were switched back to dollars, and oil was sold once again only for U.S. dollars. No longer could the world buy oil from Iraq with Euro. Global dollar supremacy was once again restored. Bush descended victoriously from a fighter jet and declared the mission accomplished - he had successfully defended the U.S. dollar, and thus the American Empire.

II The Iranian Oil Bourse
The Iranian government has finally developed the ultimate "nuclear" weapon that can swiftly destroy the financial system underpinning the American Empire. That weapon is the Iranian Oil Bourse slated to open in March 2006. It will be based on a euro-oil-trading mechanism that naturally implies payment for oil in Euro. In economic terms, this represents a much greater threat to the hegemony of the dollar than Saddam's, because it will allow anyone willing either to buy or to sell oil for Euro to transact on the exchange, thus circumventing the U.S. dollar altogether. If so, then it is likely that almost everyone will eagerly adopt this euro oil system:

~last snip~
...should the Iranian Oil Bourse accelerate, the interests that matter-those of Europeans, Chinese, Japanese, Russians, and Arabs-will eagerly adopt the Euro, thus sealing the fate of the dollar. Americans cannot allow this to happen, and if necessary, will use a vast array of strategies to halt or hobble the operation's exchange:

read the exciting conclusion HERE

Have you noticed the eerie similarity of how they are playing up Iran's NUCLEAR capability, Mr. Wilson? This administration and their black-oil cronies have painted themselves into a corner, and so, US with them. So-to-be Fed Chairman Helicopter Ben Bernanke won't be able to PRINT enough green-backs to stave off the hyper-inflation!

Stay tuned. And, as always, buy gold.

GOT GOLD?

Submitted by James Mitchem on January 18, 2006 - 1:19am.

though oil was certainly part of the thinking of the neo-cons who planned and launched the Iraq war, I think there was a lot more to it. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and that whole Cabal had a view of how the 21st century should be, they beleive that they can create a middle east friendly to U.S. interests and Israel by a strategy of what Wes called "regional dominios." They used hyped up intelligence on the Iraqi WMD destroyed apparently in 1998 by President Clinton in Operation Desert Fox.

They used the post 9/11 climate of fear to sell their war, they planned for a quick easy victory, despite the warnings of those who knew better, they ignored the intelligence gather by ambassador Joe Wilson on yellow cake uranium, well the lacktheroff anyway. And then they invaded, and assumed the best, and ignored the fact they were wrong.

Iran is a different situation, Bush after his strategy of regional dominos failed did everything he could to ignore the issue of Iran, and it got worse and worse. Bush's rhetoric of an "axis of evil" drove the Iranian government to seek a deterrent against possible U.S. invasion and regime change. And now they have Ahmadinejad, who seems to beleive that Israel should be destroyed. Iran should be denied nuclear weapons for the same reason Bush shouldn't be allowed to have them, they are both insane.

The problem with Iran is Bush is now veiwed widely as a war monger and rightfully so, and the Iranians have little reason to cooperate considering they are on the axis of evil and therfore must be overthrown accord to "Bush logic". So we have no real leverage with oil at 65$ a barrel and our military tied down in Iraq, and diplomatically speaking, Bush is now the president who cried wolf.

We need Wes Clark!!

Submitted by ms in la on January 18, 2006 - 1:45am.

Although I understand what James is saying, it can't be overlooked that those plans for the 21st Century Pax Americana did not exist in a vacuum or outside of economic factors as well.  So many pieces to this puzzle.  The Euro from dollar conversion could have dramatic implications-- and, beyond the lust for empire and the need for resources-- I think we need to look more closely at the overall financial / economics consequences of the entire issue as the article has presented. 

PNAC calls for massive build up of military and defense-- all of which takes massive economic might and lots of crafty salesmanship to sell multi-theatre wars to Americans and Congress (another goal of PNAC)  There could be some merit in this argument^....it makes sense.  Whch is more than you can say for the other 74 reasons we invaded Iraq.

All in all-- Yet another good reason we need someone capable of complex conceptualizing in the higher offices right now.

Care to order some of my Impeach Pie before we sell out?

Submitted by Vicky on January 18, 2006 - 3:07pm.

I've read this before, though not from this individual. If not the key piece of the puzzle, I certainly think it's one of the main ones. And now China and other nations have announced they are going to hold some of their reserves in other currencies than the dollar. This does not bode well for our future.

We're going to need strong, intelligent leadership. I can't imagine anyone better for the job than Wes. They're gonna be some changes ahead....

Leadership means lifting people up. --Wes Clark

Submitted by Vicky on January 18, 2006 - 3:08pm.

Leadership means lifting people up. --Wes Clark

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