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The peace movement said that the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq were oil wars. Afghanistan was about building a huge pipeline and Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world.
The US has forced the Iraqi government to privatise most of its economy, including its oil.

Iraq: The Oil Story

By Mark Holt

Research by Greg Palast on BBC's Newsnight revealed that the motives in Washington for the Iraq war were even more sinister than we first thought. The Bush administration wants to use Iraq's oil to destroy the OPEC cartel.

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries exists to keep the price of oil high and steady. As the US is the largest consumer of the world's oil, they want very cheap oil for their economy. Indeed during the initial stages of the Iraq invasion, senior Bush administration figures said if the price of oil after the war was only $25 a barrel then the war would have been well worth it. The price of oil then was $32 a barrel.

The US planned to use Iraq's oil to control the world's economies. When Tony Benn interviewed Saddam Hussein just before the war, Saddam said if the US controlled Iraq's oil as well as effectively controlling Saudi Arabia's oil, the US would not just dominate the Middle East but also the world. By managing the region's oil, they could slow down or halt India or Japan's or even China's development.

American power is slowly waning and it is being challenged. The US dollar - the world's reserve and number one currency - is under threat. As of this moment Iran is considering pricing its oil in Euros and even OPEC has said it may consider the move in the future. Venezuela no longer prices its oil in dollars.

The US economy benefits massively from having its currency as the world's reserve currency. Central banks have to hold huge stocks of US dollars because the world's oil is priced in it. This creates an insatiable demand for US dollars and allows Bush to borrow unprecedented amounts of money at the lowest interest rates.

This has funded their huge budget and trade deficits. Firstly, because the US was de-industrialized in the 1980s, the country imports far more than it exports. Also, because they have a strong dollar those goods have been imported extremely cheaply, and this has helped keep some Americans in a high standard of living.

Then there is the budget deficit. The first thing that George Bush did when he came to office was to increase military spending from 350 billion dollars a year under Clinton to 396 billion. The US can't afford it so it has borrowed, and the US is today the most indebted nation on earth.

When I was growing up, if a nation had a huge budget deficit and a huge trade deficit the country would be considered an economic basket case and the IMF would be called in to to sort out the country's finances. But the US gets away with it because of the status of its currency.

As we can see how vital this is to the US economy, can you imagine what George Bush thought when Saddam Hussein decided in the year 2000 to price Iraq's oil in Euros? Saddam's decision to do this could have been the tipping factor in George Bush's decision to invade.

The US slide doesn't end there. Precisely because of the war, a whole number of oil producing countries are getting together to gang up on Bush. Canada - which used to sell its oil to the US - is now selling it to China. When they concluded the deal they issued a communiqué, which stated that both countries believed in a world where multi-lateral institutions were supported and not undermined. That was a direct stab at the US administration. Venezuela wishes to sell its oil to China rather than the US.

Bush may have started this war with the object of getting world oil prices down to $25 a barrel; but today it's $70+ a barrel.

In summary, the madmen in the White House believe that fighting these wars will help maintain the US empire and keep the dollar in prime position. The effect however is the opposite.

The Iraqi resistance has effectively defeated the United States and in a couple of years US troops will leave in large numbers. This then leaves the question of the fourteen US bases there and the contracts drawn up by the puppet government in Baghdad with Western corporations.

My view is that the Iraqi government will not maintain itself without the direct support of the US army and will fall, and whoever takes over in Iraq will repudiate the contracts and tell Washington to close its bases and get out.
Therefore at the end of Bush's Iraq adventure, having spent a thousand billion dollars or more, the deaths of thousands of their troops and half a million dead Iraqi civilians, the US will find itself with greatly reduced influence in the Middle East and the rest of the world.

The United States may still be the world's only superpower but it is greatly weakened and loathed throughout the world, while it faces a strengthening China, India and a resurgent Russia. That's a far cry from its position just after the collapse of the USSR or its almost omniscient power after World War Two.

For more information about the Iraqi oil sell-off, visit: www.handsoffiraqioil.org or www.basraoilunion.org

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