Greenspan Admits Iraq Was About Oil

[FOTD]

Greenspan admits Iraq was about oil, as deaths put at 1.2m

"The man once regarded as the world's most powerful banker has bluntly declared that the Iraq war was 'largely' about oil.

Appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987 and retired last year after serving four presidents, Alan Greenspan has been the leading Republican economist for a generation and his utterings instantly moved world markets.

In his long-awaited memoir - out tomorrow in the US - Greenspan, 81, who served as chairman of the US Federal Reserve for almost two decades, writes: 'I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.'

In The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, he is also crystal clear on his opinion of his last two bosses, harshly criticising George W Bush for 'abandoning fiscal constraint' and praising Bill Clinton's anti-deficit policies during the Nineties as 'an act of political courage'. He also speaks of Clinton's sharp and 'curious' mind, and 'old-fashioned' caution about the dangers of debt.

Greenspan's damning comments about the war come as a survey of Iraqis, which was released last week, claims that up to 1.2 million people may have died because of the conflict in Iraq - lending weight to a 2006 survey in the Lancet that reported similarly high levels.

More than one million deaths were already being suggested by anti-war campaigners, but such high counts have consistently been rejected by US and UK officials. The estimates, extrapolated from a sample of 1,461 adults around the country, were collected by a British polling agency, ORB, which asked a random selection of Iraqis how many people living in their household had died as a result of the violence rather than from natural causes. "
http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?link id=97446


Atlas shrugged....Greenspan slept...what a bubble popper!

[YoungTulsan]

It is the sale of oil in dollars, and reinvestment into our debt (Saudis) that props up the dollar.  Saddam didn't want to play our game.  Iran doesn't want to play our game.  Chavez doesn't want to play our game.  So they are built up to the public as our mortal enemies.  Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia, where they play our game, they run one of the most repressive and brutal regimes in the world, and we say nothing, and help keep that regime in power.

Why do you think the Saudi people hate us?  15 of the 19 hijackers anyone?

People have long thought that our debt never really mattered or had consequence.  This is what we end up doing to prop up massive debt.

[cynical]

Before the offshoring of our industrial capacity to China, YT's comment would have been partially correct.  Thirty years ago when I researched the monetary effects of the OPEC petrodollar surpluses, it was true that most of the OPEC money was reinvested in the US, though not so much to purchase debt.

These days it is China that is the elephant in the room.  There are two kinds of deficits in play, the budget deficit and the current account deficit.  When the OPEC countries began investing in the US, the budget deficit wasn't that much of a factor.  The current account deficit was, though, mainly because of crude oil imports.  Now it is much worse because we import almost everything except defense and agricultural products, and we do import a lot of food, increasingly from China.  The one raw material that we import above all others is still crude oil because the powers that be haven't figured out how to make importing refined products cheaper than refining the imported crude here.

But as long as we are the world's largest consumer of refined petroleum products, we will need stable and economical sources of crude oil.  The Bush administration decided that launching a war to secure that supply was preferable to the lifestyle changes that would be needed to reduce our dependence on imported oil.  They thought the war would be won easily, with minimal loss of life, and would be paid for by Iraqi oil concessions.  None of those assumptions turned out to be correct.

The reason so many Saudis hate us is because we prop up the royal family. 

It is the sale of oil in dollars, and reinvestment into our debt (Saudis) that props up the dollar.  Saddam didn't want to play our game.  Iran doesn't want to play our game.  Chavez doesn't want to play our game.  So they are built up to the public as our mortal enemies.  Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia, where they play our game, they run one of the most repressive and brutal regimes in the world, and we say nothing, and help keep that regime in power.

Why do you think the Saudi people hate us?  15 of the 19 hijackers anyone?

People have long thought that our debt never really mattered or had consequence.  This is what we end up doing to prop up massive debt.