Since the beginning of the “crisis” and the war in Iraq I have been searching for answers. What is our government’s real reason for attacking Iraq? The official explanation offered by our government and the media has failed to pass the test. In my search for more plausible reasons I discovered several compelling concepts:
1. Weapons of Mass Destruction
2. Oil
3. Defending the Dollar
4. Military/Political Domination
5. Daddy’s War
It is disturbing to sense that our government, under the leadership of President Bush, refuses to be honest with the American people. Additionally our mass media is an accomplice. I have heard almost no intelligent news analysis of our reasons for invading Iraq. However it is we, the American people, that I am most disappointed with. Very few people seem to be asking the important, tough questions – and until recently this included myself. During the unfolding of events in Iraq I grew to feel that our leaders were deceiving us. But like many others I continued going about my days hoping the conflict would end well and would end quickly.
The strange thing is that I might support this war if our government were honest and had offered a legitimate reason. But I resent feeling that I am being deceived. I would like to live in an America governed by leaders who respect the citizens. A country that is honest and upfront about its goals and its actions. If well-informed citizens do not support certain goals or actions then they should not be taken. I know this sounds rather utopian but wasn’t this country founded on lofty principals? I hope the next administration will treat the American people with respect as intelligent individuals.
As I mentioned earlier, in my search for more plausible reasons I discovered several compelling concepts:
Weapons of Mass Destruction
“Iraq's illegal weapons programs, its attempts to hide those weapons from inspectors, and its links to terrorist groups.” [1]
This is the official explanation for our actions in Iraq. Unfortunately no proof has been found to support any of these reasons. No illegal weapons have been uncovered. As an independent country it would seem sensible that Iraq would resent inspections. Lastly, regarding the link to terrorist groups:
“‘There was no significant pattern of cooperation between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist operation,’ former State Department intelligence official Greg Thielmann said this week. Intelligence agencies agreed on the ‘lack of a meaningful connection to al-Qaida’ and said so to the White House and Congress, said Thielmann, who left State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research last September. Another former Bush administration intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, agreed there was no clear link between Saddam and al-Qaida. ‘The relationships that were plotted were episodic, not continuous,’ the former official said. A United Nations terrorism committee says it has no evidence - other than Secretary of State Colin Powell’s assertions in his Feb. 5 U.N. speech - of any ties between al-Qaida and Iraq. And U.S. officials say American forces searching in Iraq have found no significant evidence tying Saddam’s regime with Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.” [2]
The “official” reason appears to be officially unsubstantiated.
Oil
The media rarely ever mentioned this rather obvious issue.
“Iraq's proven oil reserves are 113 billion barrels, the second largest in the world after Saudi Arabia, and eleven percent of the world's total. The total reserves could be 200 million barrels or more, all of it relatively easy and cheap to extract. Thus increasing Iraqi oil production will diminish the market pressure on oil-importing countries like the US. It will also weaken the power of OPEC to influence oil markets by decisions to restrict output. Indeed, were Iraqi oil production to expand to near its capacity, the quotas established by OPEC would cease to be honored in today's market.” [1]
Our president comes from Texas and has strong ties to the oil industry:
“The president, vice-president, commerce secretary and national security adviser all have strong ties to the oil industry. Vice-President Dick Cheney amassed some £50m-$60m while he was chief executive of Haliburton oil company. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans held stock valued between $5m and $25m in Tom Brown Inc, the oil and gas exploration company he headed. National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice was a director of Chevron. The concentration of energy connections is so pronounced that some critics are calling the Bush government the ‘oil and gas administration’.” [3]
Any rational mind must agree that oil is a plausible motivator.
Defending the Dollar
“But the need to dominate oil from Iraq is also deeply intertwined with the defense of the dollar. Its current strength is supported by OPEC's requirement (secured by a secret agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia) that all OPEC oil sales be denominated in dollars. This requirement is currently threatened by the desire of some OPEC countries to allow OPEC oil sales to be paid in euros.” [1]
“As noted in a recent article by W. Clark, ‘The Real But Unspoken Reasons for the Iraq War’, the OPEC underpinning for the US dollar has shown signs of erosion in recent years. Iraq was one of the first OPEC countries, in 2000, to convert its reserves from dollars to euros. At the time a commentator for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty predicted that Saddam's political act ‘will cost Iraq millions in lost revenue.’ In fact Iraq has profited handsomely from the 17 percent gain in the value of the euro against the dollar in that time.”
Other countries have gradually been climbing on to the euro bandwagon. An article in the Iran Financial News, 8/25/02, revealed that more than half of Iran's Forex Reserve Fund assets had been converted from dollars to euros. In 2002 China began diversifying its currency reserves away from dollars into euros. According to Business Week (2/17/03) Russia's Central Bank in the past year has doubled its euro holdings to 20 percent of its $48 billion foreign exchange reserves. And for a very good reason, according to its First Deputy Chairman Oleg Vyugin: "Returns on dollar instruments are very low now. Other currency instruments pay more."
Business Week continues:
‘The story is the same across the globe. Money traders say that institutions as diverse as Bank of Canada, People's Bank of China, and Central Bank of Taiwan are giving more weight to the European currency. By the end of this year, they predict, the euro could account for 20% of global foreign currency reserves, which today amount to a cool $2.4 trillion. Little more than a year ago, the euro made up just 10%. "No one is saying that the euro's going to replace the dollar as the premier reserve currency," says Michael Klawitter, a currency strategist at WestLB Research in London. "But it will increase in importance for many central banks."...” [1]
“Those words by Thomas Jefferson embody the unfortunate state of affairs that have beset our nation. As our government prepares to go to war with Iraq, our country seems unable to answer even the most basic questions about this upcoming conflict. First, why is there a lack of a broad international coalition for toppling Saddam? If Iraq's old weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program truly possessed the threat level that President Bush has repeatedly purported, why are our historic allies not joining a coalition to militarily disarm Saddam? Secondly, despite over 400 unfettered U.N inspections, there has been no evidence reported that Iraq has reconstituted its WMD program. Indeed, the Bush administration's claims about Iraq's WMD capability appear demonstrably false. Third, and despite President Bush's repeated claims, the CIA has not found any links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. To the contrary, some intelligence analysts believe it is more likely Al Qaeda might acquire an unsecured former Soviet Union Weapon(s) of Mass Destruction, or potentially from sympathizers within a destabilized Pakistan.”
“Moreover, immediately following Congress's vote on the Iraq Resolution, we suddenly became informed of North Korea's nuclear program violations. Kim Jong Il is processing uranium in order to produce nuclear weapons this year. (It should be noted that just after coming into office President Bush was informed in January 2001of North Korea's suspected nuclear program). Despite the obvious contradictions, President Bush has not provided a rationale answer as to why Saddam's seemingly dormant WMD program possesses a more imminent threat that North Korea's active nuclear weapons program. Millions of people in the U.S. and around the world are asking the simple question: ‘Why attack Iraq now?’ Well, behind all the propaganda is a simple truth -- one of the core drivers for toppling Saddam is actually the euro currency…” [4]
“Although Iraq's oil currency switch appears to be completely censored by the U.S. media conglomerates, this UK article illustrates that the euro has gained almost 25% against the dollar since late 2001, which also applies to the $10 billion in Iraq's U.N. `oil for food' reserve fund that was previously held in dollars has also gained that same percent value since the switch. It was reported in 2003 that Iraq's UN reserve fund had swelled from $10 billion dollars to 26 billion euros. According to a former government analyst, the following scenario would occur if OPEC made an unlikely, but sudden (collective) switch to euros, as opposed to a gradual transition.
‘Otherwise, the effect of an OPEC switch to the euro would be that oil-consuming nations would have to flush dollars out of their (central bank) reserve funds and replace these with euros. The dollar would crash anywhere from 20-40% in value and the consequences would be those one could expect from any currency collapse and massive inflation (think Argentina currency crisis, for example). You'd have foreign funds stream out of the U.S. stock markets and dollar denominated assets, there'd surely be a run on the banks much like the 1930s, the current account deficit would become unserviceable, the budget deficit would go into default, and so on. Your basic 3rd world economic crisis scenario.
‘The United States economy is intimately tied to the dollar's role as reserve currency. This doesn't mean that the U.S. couldn't function otherwise, but that the transition would have to be gradual to avoid such dislocations (and the ultimate result of this would probably be the U.S. and the E.U. switching roles in the global economy).’” [4]
I once overheard a history professor state that every war has been fought for gold. Not literally gold – but always for items of value such as land, food, minerals or wealth. An economic explanation seems plausible.
Military/Political Domination
“On 17 April 2003, the New York Times ran an article about US plans for four permanent military bases in Iraq. In May, the US rammed Resolution 1483 through the Security Council; this gives the ‘coalition’ control of Iraq's oil revenues. In September, Paul Bremer passed laws allowing for 100% foreign ownership of most Iraqi companies, calling for a 15% flat tax, and more. Now, we have an interim law that requires that the new ‘sovereign’ government of Iraq keeps those illegally passed laws without alteration until after new elections. The four military bases have become 14. The US will maintain a force of more than 130,000 troops in Iraq, but will also appoint Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez as commander of the new Iraqi ‘army’. The new US ambassador, John Negroponte, who was known as ‘proconsul’ when he was ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s and responsible for running a large part of the Reagan administration's dirty war against the Sandinistas, told the Senate foreign relations committee that the new sovereign government would ‘not need law-making authority’. What is a sovereign government with a foreign occupying army, no army under its own command, no law-making authority, and no control over its own revenues?” [5]
“Iraq must be made a permanent military outpost of an expansionist American military-imperial network that includes, in a looser sense, much of eastern Europe, central Asia, and the Middle East. Its government should be a tightly controlled client state, not a client state with its own independent agendas, as Saudi Arabia has been. The oil of the Middle East is now too important, not just as a source of supply to the US, but as a source of leverage over the other powers that need it (Europe, China and Japan) to allow Arabs more than a marginal degree of control over it. That is the true transformation of the Middle East. Not towards greater democracy or more elections, but toward greater and more overt American military/political domination.” [5]
Are we the first major power to revive Imperialism in the 21st century? Sounds plausible.
Daddy’s War
Sure it sounds a little odd - until you think about it. A son decides to settle a score for his father. Just taking care of a little unfinished business. I won’t elaborate on this one – I’ll just throw it into the ring for consideration.
References
I’ll be the first to admit that I referenced several unusual sources. But as I mentioned earlier our mainstream media has avoided meaningful new analysis of the events in Iraq. I can’t stress the importance of gathering the other sides of the story. Al Jazeera is an excellent source of news and opinion from the Middle East. I expect Al Jazeera to be as biased as our media but also I believe they offer a valuable second opinion from the region.
[1] http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/iraq.html
[2] http://www.seacoastonline.com/2003news/07132003/world/39226.htm
[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1138009.stm
[4] http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/RRiraqWar.html#p1
[5] http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D584EFEC-2F5B-4665-BF1B-382E1B7ED954.htm
Lastly, I found this bit of wisdom in the Al Jazeera article:
“The Bush administration, in everything from its assault on civil liberties to its cult of official secrecy and executive privilege, is at least the most anti-democratic presidency since Richard Nixon.” [5]
June 06, 2004 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)
This afternoon I read a fascinating AP article about Joichi Ito and his Web journal:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040531/ap_on_hi_te/internet_profile_japan_s_blogger_3
I had heard the terms blog and blogging but I really didn't understand the concept. The article not only caught my eye - it also caught my imagination. Personal publishing and this method of sharing ideas are brilliant. The interweaving of individuals and ideas is intoxicating.
I am primarily interested in art, design and culture but I find myself thinking more and more about politics and the media each day. Like many Americans I am frustrated with our government and “big” media. I want to know what’s really happening in the world. The “spin” that is applied to many current events is becoming tangible. If I understand blogging properly I hope it will lead to new ideas, beauty and the truth!
June 03, 2004 in Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (2)
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