| Author | Message | | Guest-cdbc | | Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2003 9:51 am Post subject: Oil, Dollars, Euros And Dead Iraqi's |
| The following conveys the connection between JINSA Zionist extremism and oil which are the combined motivation for the coming invasion of Iraq (Dick Cheney is mentioned below as he was on the board of advisors for JINSA before becoming Vice President and putting follow JINSA Zionist extremists Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle into power, and Mr. Cheney was also CEO of the Halliburton oil company which has made millions from the oil for food program in Iraq):
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1554.htm
Oil, Dollars, Euros And Dead Iraqi's
By Nick Beams
US strategic concerns
Control of Middle Eastern oil resources has always been a matter of strategic concern to the United States. In his famous speech of 1947 when he initiated the Cold War and enunciated the doctrine that now goes under his name, US President Truman referred to the Middle East with its “great natural resources” as among the considerations that motivated the fight against “communism.”
In 1974-75, in the midst of the OPEC oil price hikes and the threat of extended oil embargoes, the US administration discussed the possibility of undertaking military action against oil-producing states.
With the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979, who was installed in a CIA-backed coup against the nationalist Mossadegh government in 1953, the US became increasingly concerned about threats to its interests in the region. Accordingly, in his January 1980 State of the Union address, President Carter warned: “An attempt by an outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” This new policy, known as the Carter doctrine, he explained was necessitated by the “overwhelming dependence of Western nations on vital oil supplies from the Middle East.”
In testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1990, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, defence secretary (now vice-president) Cheney set out the issues involved in the US-led war. “Iraq controlled 10 percent of the world’s reserves prior to the invasion of Kuwait. Once Saddam Hussein took Kuwait, he doubled that to approximately 20 percent of the world’s known oil reserves ... Once he acquired Kuwait ... he was clearly in a position to dictate the future of worldwide energy policy, and that gave him a stranglehold on our economy and on that of most of the other nations of the world as well.”
Within days of the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, an even more blunt assessment was delivered by a “senior American official” (believed to be Secretary of State James Baker) in a comment to the New York Times: “We are talking about oil. Got it? Oil, vital American interests.”
In the period since the Gulf War, those interests have become more, not less, important as the figures on the dependence of the US economy on oil imports reveals. And the question of which corporations control the flow of oil is of vital significance, both from an economic and political standpoint.
As the American academic Michael T. Klare (author of the book Resource Wars) points out in a recent article [See Foreign Policy in Focus at http://www.fpif.org], one of the key objectives of the present US administration flows from the analysis made by Cheney in 1990. “[W]hoever controls the flow of Persian Gulf oil has a ‘stranglehold’ not only on our economy but also ‘on that of most of that of the other nations of the world as well.’ This is a powerful image, and perfectly describes the administration’s thinking about the Gulf area, except in reverse: by serving as the dominant power in the Gulf, WE maintain a ‘stranglehold’ over the economies of other nations.”
How important the maintenance of this dominance has become has been thrown into sharp relief by the recent conflicts between the US and “old Europe”—in particular France and Germany—in the recent period.
As Klare emphasises, control over Persian Gulf oil is also “consistent with the administration’s declared goal of attaining permanent military superiority over all other nations” and the need, set out in the administration’s statements on national security policy, to “prevent any rival from ever reaching the point where it could compete with the United States on something resembling equal standing.”
Oil and the US dollar In addition to the geo-political interests that operated at the time of the first Gulf War and whose importance has increased, not diminished in the intervening period, there is a powerful new reason why the US needs to ensure a “stranglehold” grip on Persian Gulf oil resources.
Various media commentators try to deny the connection between oil and the US war drive. They always insist that in the final analysis it does not matter who controls these resources since they still have to be sold on the world market where supplies will be available to the US and other purchasers.
Even assuming that the oil market operates in the way suggested (ignoring the question of boycotts, production restrictions to lift prices and other such measures) there is still another issue to be addressed—in what currency the oil contracts will be paid? And this is a question which is acquiring extreme importance for the long-term financial and economic stability of the United States.
When the Gulf War was launched in 1990, an historic transformation had recently taken place in the financial position of the US. For the first time since it became the pre-eminent capitalist power in 1914, the US had become an indebted nation. In the decade and a half since then, it has become the most indebted nation in history.
On the latest estimates, US debts to the rest of the world total more than $2.7 trillion, equivalent to more than one quarter of gross domestic product. To finance this debt, the US requires an inflow of around $2 billion per day from the rest of the world. One of the main reasons the US is able to attract such a massive inflow (amounting to around two-thirds of the international surpluses generated in the world economy) is the role played by the dollar as the central international reserve currency. It has been estimated that by the late 1990s more than four-fifths of all foreign exchange transactions and half of world exports were denominated in dollars, with dollars accounting for about two-thirds of all official currency reserves.
But the establishment of the euro by the European Union means that a potential rival has emerged on the international economic scene. At first, the continued rise of the dollar meant that the euro was not an attractive proposition. But the situation has changed with the collapse of the US share market bubble. Since the end of 2000, the dollar has fallen by more than 15 percent against the euro.
This is leading OPEC producers to consider whether, at some point in the future, it might be worth their while to shift from payments in dollars to euros. In a speech delivered in April last year, Javad Yarjani, head of OPEC’s Petroleum Market Analysis Department, noted that while in most OPEC countries would continue, in the short-term, to demand payment in dollars, OPEC “will not discount entirely the possibility of adopting euro pricing and payments in the future.”
A shift by OPEC to the euro would rapidly confront the US with an economic “nightmare scenario.” Major oil importers would need to transfer some of their funds from US dollars reserves—stocks, bonds and other assets—into euro reserves. This would see a sharp fall in the value of the dollar, possibly setting in motion a further withdrawal of funds as investors became nervous over the value of their dollar assets. Suddenly the burgeoning US debt, which at present plays little or no role in day-to-day financial calculations, would become a factor of considerable importance.
In other words, a switch in the financial basis of the oil export market, or a significant part of it, would have major consequences for the global financial position of the US, quite irrespective of whether oil was freely available or the price charged for it. However, if the US were in control of Iraqi supplies, either directly or through a puppet, it would be in a much better position to block any currency shift by the OPEC countries.
Consideration of the long-term strategic issues make clear why Washington is being driven to use military means to try to overcome the major economic problems confronting US capitalism.
Source: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/feb2003/oil-f19.shtml
See Also: The Real but Unspoken Reasons for the Iraq War
Behind the Invasion of Iraq Oil, Currency and the War on Iraq
JINSA Zionist Jews Arranging New Regime of US Occupied Iraq:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/02/22/jinsa-zionist-jews-arranging-new-regime-of-us-occupied-iraq.php | |  | | Guest-cdbc | | | | Guest-c651 | | Posted: Sun Feb 23, 2003 12:02 am Post subject: The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War With Iraq |
| The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War With Iraq: A Macroeconomic and Geo-strategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth by William Clark
http://www.mediamonitors.net/williamclark1.html | | | | Guest-c651 | | Posted: Sun Feb 23, 2003 12:41 am Post subject: MI-6 and CIA oppose war on Iraq |
| VERY INTERESTING
MI-6 and CIA oppose war on Iraq
Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk)
By Paul Lashmar and Raymond Whitaker
LONDON: Tony Blair and George Bush are encountering an
unexpected obstacle in their campaign for war against Iraq
their own intelligence agencies.
Britain and America's spies believe that they are being
politicised: that the intelligence they provide is being selectively
applied to lead to the opposite conclusion from the one they
have drawn, which is that Iraq is much less of a threat than their
political masters claim. Worse, when the intelligence agencies
fail to do the job, the politicians will not stop at plagiarism to
make their case, even "tweaking" the plagiarised material to
ensure a better fit.
"You cannot just cherry-pick evidence that suits your case and
ignore the rest. It is a cardinal rule of intelligence," said one
aggrieved officer. "Yet that is what the PM is doing." Not since
Harold Wilson has a Prime Minister been so unpopular with his
top spies.
The mounting tension is mirrored in Washington. "We've gone
from a zero position, where presidents refused to cite detailed
intel as a source, to the point now where partisan material is
being officially attributed to these agencies," said one US
intelligence source.
Mr Blair is facing an unprecedented, if covert, rebellion by his top
spies, who last week used the politicians' own weapon the
strategic leak against him. The BBC received a Defence
Intelligence Staff (DIS) document which showed that British
intelligence believes there are no current links between the Iraqi
regime and the al-Qa'ida network. The classified document,
written last month, said there had been contact between the two
in the past, but it assessed that any fledgling relationship
foundered due to mistrust and incompatible ideologies.
That conclusion contradicted one of the main charges laid
against Saddam Hussein by the United States and Britain, most
notably in Wednesday's speech by the Secretary of State, Colin
Powell, to the UN Security Council that he has cultivated
contacts with the group blamed for the 11 September attacks. Such a leak
of up-to-date and sensitive material reveals the
depth of anger within Britain's spy community over the misuse of
intelligence by Downing Street. "A DIS document like this is
highly secret. Whoever leaked it must have been quite senior
and had unofficial approval from within the highest levels of
British intelligence," said one insider. In response the Foreign
Secretary, Jack Straw, tried to play down the importance of the
DIS, which he repeatedly called the Defence Intelligence Services.
No sooner had that embarrassment passed, however, than it
emerged that large chunks of the Government's latest dossier
on Iraq, which claimed to draw on "intelligence material", were
taken from published academic articles, some of them several
years old. It was this recycled material that Mr Powell held up in
front of a worldwide television audience, saying: "I would call my
colleagues' attention to the fine paper that the United Kingdom
distributed ... which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception
activities."
Now Glen Rangwala, the Cambridge University analyst who
blew the whistle on the original plagiarism, has pointed out the
deception did not end there. He showed that the young Downing
Street team, led by Alison Blackshaw, Alastair Campbell's
personal assistant, which put the document together had
"hardened" the language in several places.
How selectively the work of the intelligence agencies is being
used on both sides of the Atlantic is shown by a revealing clash
between Senator Bob Graham and the Bush administration's
top intelligence advisers. Mr Graham, a Democrat, is chair of the
Senate Intelligence Committee. Last July, baffled by the
apparently contradictory assessments on Iraq by America's 13
different intelligence agencies, he asked for a report to be drawn
up by the CIA that estimated the likelihood of Saddam Hussein
using weapons of mass destruction.
The CIA procrastinated, but finally produced a report after
Senator Graham threatened to accuse them of obstruction. The
conclusions were so significant that he immediately asked for it
to be declassified. The CIA concluded that the likelihood of
Saddam Hussein using such weapons was "very low" for the
"foreseeable future". The only circumstances in which Iraq would
be more likely to use chemical weapons or encourage terrorist
attacks would be if it was attacked. After more arguments the CIA
partly declassified the report. Senator Graham noted that the
parts released were those that made the case for war with Iraq.
Those that did not were withheld. He appealed, and the extra
material was eventually released. Yet the report has largely been
ignored by the US media.
Last week Colin Powell made much of the presence in Iraq of
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man he identified as running an
al-Qa'ida network from Baghdad. He drew on information from
al-Zarqawi's captured deputy, but made no mention of another
explosive allegation from the same detainee: that Osama bin
Laden's organisation received passports and $1m (£600,000) in
cash from a member of the royal family in Qatar. It is well known
in US intelligence circles that the CIA director, George Tenet, is
angry with the Qatari government's failure to take action. But the
Gulf state would be the main US air operations base in any war
on Iraq, and Washington does not want to air the inconvenient
facts in public.
The doctored dossier
A British government dossier, "Iraq its infrastructure of
concealment, deception and intimidation", was largely copied
complete with poor punctuation and grammar from an article in
last September's Middle East Review of International Affairs and
two articles in Jane's Intelligence Review.
But the Downing Street compilers also rounded up the numbers
and inserted stronger language than in the original. In a section
on a movement called Fedayeen Saddam, members are,
according to the original, "recruited from regions loyal to
Saddam". The Government dossier says they are "press-ganged
from regions known to be loyal to Saddam".
On Fedayeen Saddam's total membership, the original says
18,000 to 40,000. The dossier says 30,000 to 40,000.
A similar bumping-up of figures occurs with the description of
the Directorate of Military Intelligence. Included among the duties
of the secret police, the Mukhabarat, says the original, are
"monitoring foreign embassies in Iraq" and "aiding opposition
groups in hostile regimes". The dossier says the duties include
"spying on foreign embassies in Iraq" and "supporting terrorist
organisations in hostile regimes".
The plagiarists cannot even copy correctly, confusing two
organisations called General Security and Military Security. This
means that the dossier says Military Security was created in
1992, then refers to it moving to new headquarters in 1990. The
head of Military Security in 1997 is named as Taha al-Ahbabi,
when he was actually in charge of General Security. | | | | Guest-400c | | Posted: Sun Feb 23, 2003 2:23 am Post subject: THE "DON'T KNOW" CROWD |
| FEB. 24, 2003
THE "DON'T KNOW" CROWD
BY CHARLEY REESE
The Bush administration adamantly insists that Iraq has
weapons of mass destruction, but despite 12 years of inspections,
bombings and spying, it doesn't have a clue as to where they are.
It frequently warns us of terror attacks, but always says it
doesn't know where, when or how. Nor have there been any terror
attacks in the United States in the past 18 months.
Is it any wonder that millions of people around the world and
in the United States don't support President George Bush's personal
crusade to topple Saddam Hussein? Keep in mind that after the
Sept. 11 attack, which Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with,
virtually the entire world united in sympathy with us. Never has
one president destroyed so much support by so many people in so
short a time.
The fact is, the people in the Bush administration who want
to go to war with Iraq wanted to go to war with Iraq before Sept.
11. As a matter of fact, they wanted to go to war with Iraq before
George Bush was even elected president. That's a matter of record.
This war against Iraq has nothing to do with disarming Iraq and
nothing to do with terrorism. It has to do with the United States
creating a situation in which it and Israel will dominate the Middle
East and its oil resources.
The thing to remember about these alleged weapons of mass
destruction is that nobody in the Bush administration or with the
United Nations has ever laid eyes on them. What exists is a
discrepancy between two numbers in reports -- both supplied by
the Iraqi government. One report stated that so many chemical
bombs were used; another report had a different number. And the
Iraqis are certainly right in that nobody can prove a negative;
you can't produce for inspection what you don't have.
I personally don't know if these weapons exist in Iraq or
not. I do know they exist in many other countries. I do know that
in the Gulf War, Iraq did not use any chemical or biological
weapons, even when it was being routed from Kuwait and "bombed
back into the preindustrial age," to use an American phrase.
I do know that in the 12 years since, Iraq has not used any
chemical or biological weapons, even though it has been
subjected to the harshest economic sanctions in modern history
and to practically regular bombing. I do know that in the past
12 years, Iraq has not threatened, much less attacked, any of
its neighbors, while during that the same period of time we have
attacked Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yugoslavia. I
do know that every one of the "neighbors" George Bush claims
Iraq is a threat to has said repeatedly that it does not feel
threatened by Iraq.
I do know that the only leader threatening the world with
nuclear weapons and pre-emptive attack is George W. Bush. It
gives me no pleasure to point that out. But it is not the role
of an American citizen to be a sheep. It has become apparent that
those of us who supported Bush made a mistake. I'm beginning to
believe that a philanderer and a liar is less dangerous than an
upright but ignorant man who thinks God has appointed him to
rule the world.
The best way to support our troops is to try to prevent the
Bush administration from sacrificing their lives for the hidden
agenda of the crazy neoconservatives in his administration.
Young Americans should not die because a bunch of chicken hawks
have a cockamamie idea that they can bring liberal democracy to
the Middle East by making war. That's like trying to sell pork
barbecue in Mecca. What the president is intent on doing is
committing a crime against humanity. If he goes through with it,
he'll have to change his ritualistic "God bless America" to
"God forgive us."
(Write to Charley Reese at P.O. Box 2446, Orlando, FL 32802) | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
