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Saturday, February 15, 2003
02:55 - It's sort of all about oooiiiil
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/RRiraqWar.html

(top) link
A reader sends me this link so as to inject it into the "warblogger" discussion. It's a theory that the Iraq war is not about fighting terrorism, or about oil per se. It's in fact about protecting the monetary context of Iraq's oil rights, which are currently scheduled to switch from the dollar to the euro as a trade currency, which would reduce the US' buying power by 20-40%.
Although completely suppressed in the U.S. media, the answer to the Iraq enigma is simple yet shocking -- it is an oil currency war. The real reason for this upcoming war is this administration's goal of preventing further Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) momentum towards the euro as an oil transaction currency standard. However, in order to pre-empt OPEC, they need to gain geo-strategic control of Iraq along with its 2nd largest proven oil reserves. This lengthy essay will discuss the macroeconomics of the `petro-dollar' and the unpublicized but real threat to U.S. economic hegemony from the euro as an alternative oil transaction currency.
Now, bear in mind first of all that this article was posted on that paragon of unbiased academic writing, IndyMedia. And while it has lots of facts and figures to back up its postulates, I can't help but note that a) it's ultimately founded on a guess, and b) it depends on a tacit acceptance of the idea of a total censorial blackout of this damning angle by the all-powerful US government.

I'm not one to dig up my own facts and figures at 3:00 AM to bolster or disprove a thesis like this. But my gut tells me this isn't what's going on. Quite frankly, Iraq's oil is not that important-- not so important that Bush would instigate the largest lie in US history for it (making unpopular war on a sovereign nation for self-serving reasons never made clear to the American public?) and risk being made an international pariah if such truth ever came out. What with all the talk of "political capital" and deals struck with the UN in the interest of answering charges of unilateralism, and Rumsfeld playing up the derisive Franco-German anti-Americanism bloc as a moral foe... can you imagine Rumsfeld or Bush having to answer French or German claims in 2004 that the war wasn't in fact about what Powell had tried so hard and so doggedly to convince them of, but was instead just some petty price-fixing maneuver over Iraq's oil (most of whose output goes to France's TotalFinaElf anyway)?

It's an interesting idea, but it's a theory that presupposes a level of diabolical subterfuge that borders on 9/11-was-engineered-by-Bush conspiracy-theory territory. I'd say it's more a matter of food for thought experiments than a stroke of enlightenment.

But that said, and my skepticism out of the way, I can now press the plunger and inject this puppy into the general discourse. I'll let those with more facts and mad bl0gG1ng sK1lLz than myself take it from here.


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