James D. Stallardblog

Hands up who knows why we invaded Iraq.
Ok, now hands up who thinks it wasn't to protect US oil interests.

I think most of us agree that the real reason we're all in Iraq is because of oil.

Morally speaking, the actions of the UK and US governments are reprehensible. But it's not the invasion that irks me, it's the reasons we were given. Saddam wasn't a terrorist threat. Saddam was an economic threat.

Consider this:

In order for the world to buy oil, it must pay for it in Dollars. In order to do anything with the Dollars earned from oil, the oil producers must either buy goods and services from the USA or deposit the cash in a US$ deposit account - the quantities involved mean there is only one bank to handle such vast deposits, and that’s the Federal Reserve. The US is a net importer, meaning that it imports much more than it exports, so the balances in those Federal Reserve accounts just keep growing.

This process is referred to as the petro-dollar cycle.

Like any bank, the money deposited therein is used by the bank to fund its activities and make a profit. Thus the bank makes money and pays interest on the deposits. What is happening is that the huge amount of cash in the Federal Reserve is funding the US economy and mostly it’s heaving military. Keep in mind that the cost of trying to keep up with the US military actually bankrupted the USSR and largely caused the breakup of the USSR into the much smaller Russian Federation.

Now we see the stakes they were playing for, lets consider this...

Iraq has over 100billion barrels of oil in known reserve and perhaps 3 times that in unknown reserves. The world uses 85million barrels a day and the US about 20million barrels a day on its own. The US demand outstripped it’s own production capability in the 1970’s, so we know that simple crude oil is important, not to mention the continuation of the petro-dollar cycle.

So, Iraq was invaded to secure oil for the US (and presumably its close allies).

In 2000, Saddam realised that with the Weapons Inspectors' failed attempts to find Weapons of Mass Destruction (over 9000 inspections in over 10 years) the sanctions prohibiting Iraq from selling oil would soon relax and he would be able to sell his oil on the open market. Saddam decided to sell his oil for Euros, which means those huge deposits of cash would no longer go to the Federal Reserve, they would go to the European Central Bank.

As Iraq has (possibly) more oil and is (probably) capable of pumping it faster than Saudi Arabia, this would very likely cause the other oil producers to sell in Euros (the Euro is worth more than the Dollar on the world market) and no more Dollars would flow to the Federal Reserve. Without this effectively unlimited line of credit, the US will no longer be able to sustain its massive spending and the US military (larger than the next 25 militarily strongest nations COMBINED!) will have to be downsized, drastically.

So, Iraq was invaded to protect the US economy.

Interesting then to note that Venezuela and Iran (also lots of oil) have recently started talking about selling their oil for Euros. One wonders if the current diplomatic spat over nuclear weapons in Iran is another attempt by the Bush/Blair administrations to make us believe in Weapons of Mass destruction all over again as a precursor to invading Iran too. The Venezuelan premier (Mr Chavez) has been complaining for some time that the US is trying to get rid of him and maybe we should start taking notice.

I read some great statistics today. Apparently CERT has reported that in 2005 *NIX security flaws outnumbered Windows flaws by a factor of almost 3 to 1.

I have often gotten flamed by the *NIX community at large about the number of percieved Windows security flaws and the argument usually goes thus: "Windows is rubbish because it's insecure and no-one in their right mind would deploy it in a public facing role". My response has always been to point out the vaste numbers of people using Windows and that any OS under such public scrutiny will always appear to be flawed. I also like to point out that any OS will be insecure if it is deployed in an insecure fashion.

With the statement from CERT there are a couple of points worth noting:
1. The boot's on the other foot now chaps.
2. Perhaps it is the increased use of *NIX that is bringing it under the same level of scrutiny as Windows, but given that most of the worlds desktops are running Windows, I doubt very much if *NIX use is more than a small percentage of Windows market penetration.

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Statistics taken from Computer Weekly 10/01/2006 Pg4 In Brief:
5198 Vulnerabilities reported in 2005 of which
2328 relating to *NIX
812 relating to Windows
2058 cross platform

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