# Iraq casus belli was Saddam wanting oil to be traded in euros **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 4, 2012, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-casus-belli-was-saddam-wanting-oil-to-be-traded-in-euros/633639 "2012-09-04T14:26:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![mmmbeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecb155/32.png) [@mmmbeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mmmbeer)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2012, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-casus-belli-was-saddam-wanting-oil-to-be-traded-in-euros/633639/41 "2012-09-06T18:00:03Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Just a factual note here: the total amount of American currency in circulation is in the neighborhood of $800 billion, most of which is held outside the United States. > > In comparison, one of the most common ways of measuring how much money exists in the US economy – basically adding the cash in circulation to the amount of deposits in checking and savings accounts that are easily accessed by people – reveals that our money supply is closer to $10 trillion. > > Does that Australian’s forecast of “massive inflation” sound plausible to you? That is an increase of almost 10 %. So, maybe not massive, but it would certainly be bad for the economy. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2012, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-casus-belli-was-saddam-wanting-oil-to-be-traded-in-euros/633639/42 "2012-09-06T18:06:22Z")
> [@mmmbeer](#): > > That is an increase of almost 10 %. So, maybe not massive, but it would certainly be bad for the economy. Your math is terrible. Even if every single note of American currency that’s overseas was involved in the oil industry, that might be close to 5%. Do you really think every single dollar overseas is involved in the oil industry? Or, more importantly, that when Saddam Hussein’s government sold oil, that the buyer would pay with cash, perhaps in a stainless steel attache case handcuffed to his wrist? ---
**Author:** ![mmmbeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecb155/32.png) [@mmmbeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mmmbeer)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2012, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-casus-belli-was-saddam-wanting-oil-to-be-traded-in-euros/633639/43 "2012-09-06T18:09:38Z")
My math is terrible??? 800 billion isn’t almost 10% of 10 trillion? okee dokee then. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2012, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-casus-belli-was-saddam-wanting-oil-to-be-traded-in-euros/633639/44 "2012-09-06T18:15:57Z")
$800 billion is the total amount of US cash dollars in existence, get it? Not all of it is overseas, and not all of it is involved in the oil markets. Therefore, there cannot be an increase of 10% in US money supply. Ya follow? But perhaps I should have said your reasoning has a large error, rather than your math being poor. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2012, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-casus-belli-was-saddam-wanting-oil-to-be-traded-in-euros/633639/45 "2012-09-06T18:36:39Z")
Journalist Greg Palast has a theory (not involving euros) which I addressed in [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=381910) in 2006. In a nutshell, the five big international oil companies profit immensely from OPEC existing and keeping up the price of petroleum, because they buy most of the oil they refine from OPEC countries, and: > [@](#): > > . . . When OPEC raises the price of crude, Big Oil makes out big time. The oil majors are not simply passive resellers of OPEC production. In OPEC nations, they have “profit sharing agreements” (PSAs) that give the companies a direct slice of the higher price charged. More important, the industry has its own reserves whose value is attached, like a suckerfish, to OPEC’s price targets. Here’s a statistic you won’t see on Army recruitment posters: The rise in the price of oil after the first three years of the war boosted the value of the reserves of ExxonMobil alone by just over $666 billion. The devil is in the details. Maintaining the status quo for the oil companies requires **holding down oil production,** and Iraq has been assigned that sorry role since it was founded (it has 74 known oil fields and only 15 in production). In 1927, the major oil company execs met at a hotel room in Belgium and signed an agreement: The Anglo-Persian company (now British Petroleum) would pump almost all its oil from Iran; Standard Oil, under the name of the Arabian-American Oil Company (Aramco), would limit almost all its drilling to Saudi Arabia; Anglo-Persian would drill in Iraq’s Kirkuk and Basra fields but it would drill very little. And Hussein was messing with that salubrious arrangement. > [@](#): > > The answer was that Saddam was jerking the oil market up and down. One week, without notice, the man in the moustache suddenly announces he’s going to “support the Palestinian intifada” and cuts off all oil shipments. The result: Worldwide oil prices jump up. The next week, Saddam forgets about the Palestinians and pumps to the maximum allowed under the Oil-for-Food Program. The result: Oil prices suddenly dive-bomb. Up, down, up, down. Saddam was _out of control._ > > “Control is what it’s all about,” Lapham told me. "It’s not about getting the oil, it’s about _controlling oil’s price."_ ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2012, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-casus-belli-was-saddam-wanting-oil-to-be-traded-in-euros/633639/46 "2012-09-06T18:45:25Z")
Paging **Kozmik** : the real reason Saddam had to go was that he was challenging the Illuminati-run oil industry, who pull the strings on world leaders. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2012, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-casus-belli-was-saddam-wanting-oil-to-be-traded-in-euros/633639/47 "2012-09-06T18:51:21Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Journalist Greg Palast has a theory (not involving euros) which I addressed in [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=381910) in 2006. In a nutshell, the five big international oil companies profit immensely from OPEC existing and keeping up the price of petroleum, because they buy most of the oil they refine from OPEC countries, and: > > Maintaining the status quo for the oil companies requires **holding down oil production,** and Iraq has been assigned that sorry role since it was founded (it has 74 known oil fields and only 15 in production). In 1927, the major oil company execs met at a hotel room in Belgium and signed an agreement: The Anglo-Persian company (now British Petroleum) would pump almost all its oil from Iran; Standard Oil, under the name of the Arabian-American Oil Company (Aramco), would limit almost all its drilling to Saudi Arabia; Anglo-Persian would drill in Iraq’s Kirkuk and Basra fields but it would drill very little. > > And Hussein was messing with that salubrious arrangement. This is ridiculous Iraq was involved in two wars which cost Iraq over two hundred thousand lives in which they invaded other countries to try to get their oil. Hussein was desperate to obtain and sell as much oil as possible. The idea that he would not drill in 59 fields in order to honor a fifty year old agreement among oil companies is nonsense. Meanwhile if keeping Iraqi oil out of the market was a goal, the sanctions were accomplishing that, and as a direct result of the Iraq war, Iraq is now producing more oil than it ever has. ---
**Author:** ![mmmbeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecb155/32.png) [@mmmbeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mmmbeer)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2012, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-casus-belli-was-saddam-wanting-oil-to-be-traded-in-euros/633639/48 "2012-09-06T18:55:07Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > $800 billion is the total amount of US cash dollars in existence, get it? Not all of it is overseas, and not all of it is involved in the oil markets. Therefore, there cannot be an increase of 10% in US money supply. Ya follow? > > But perhaps I should have said your reasoning has a large error, rather than your math being poor. I follow just fine. I don’t recall saying it was actual physical currency with a guy with shades and the briefcase and handcuffs. I think you brought that up. Do you mean to say that oil is only paid for with physical dollars moved about from country to country, so that if that is all there is physically, then that is all that could come back to the U.S.? Ya follow? ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2012, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-casus-belli-was-saddam-wanting-oil-to-be-traded-in-euros/633639/49 "2012-09-06T18:56:35Z")
> [@mmmbeer](#): > > How did the world trade center get into it? That was destroyed by Saudi Arabians. > > And it seems your question is how does the U.S. avoid the inflation, which would imply you mean that the U.S. destroyed the WTC and cause the recession? That doesn’t make sense, so I will assume one of us doesn’t understand what you are trying to say. If the secret true reason for the invasion of Iraq was to avoid oil dollar inflation, what was done to bring about the conditions to allow war with Iraq? If in this oil dollar conspiracy theory the WTC attacks are an entirely fortuitous but totally unrelated event that produced the conditions to make war with Iraq possible then what exactly did this oil dollar inflation preventing cabal do? If the answer is nothing, then how was it secretly the true reason for the war? ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2012, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-casus-belli-was-saddam-wanting-oil-to-be-traded-in-euros/633639/50 "2012-09-06T19:03:43Z")
> [@mmmbeer](#): > > I follow just fine. I don’t recall saying it was actual physical currency with a guy with shades and the briefcase and handcuffs. I think you brought that up. Do you mean to say that oil is only paid for with physical dollars moved about from country to country, so that if that is all there is physically, then that is all that could come back to the U.S.? Ya follow? You said that there would be a 10% increase in the US money supply. That’s just not even plausible. I just want to make sure you understand that Saddam wasn’t being paid in cash for oil sales, and that you understand that the $800 billion or so in US currency that exists in the world (a) isn’t all overseas and (b) is not all involved in the oil markets. That’s because, for your prediction of a 10% increase in the US money supply to be accurate, all $800 billion in cash would (a) have to be all overseas and (b) all involved in the oil markets. ---
**Author:** ![mmmbeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecb155/32.png) [@mmmbeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mmmbeer)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2012, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-casus-belli-was-saddam-wanting-oil-to-be-traded-in-euros/633639/51 "2012-09-06T19:14:49Z")
UNCLE. CALF’S ROPE. Whatever the code word is. This isn’t MY theory. Didn’t you see the part about I read something some Australian guy wrote. I don’t claim to know how much money is out there and that. Just what I read. Then I’m told that 800 billion isn’t close to 10% of 10 trillion. That’s all. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2012, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-casus-belli-was-saddam-wanting-oil-to-be-traded-in-euros/633639/52 "2012-09-06T23:49:19Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > If the secret true reason for the invasion of Iraq was to avoid oil dollar inflation, what was done to bring about the conditions to allow war with Iraq? If in this oil dollar conspiracy theory the WTC attacks are an entirely fortuitous but totally unrelated event that produced the conditions to make war with Iraq possible then what exactly did this oil dollar inflation preventing cabal do? If the answer is nothing, then how was it secretly the true reason for the war? You’re trying to drag trutherism into this where there is no need. Why, given that 9/11 happened completely independently, did the USA decide target Iraq following 9/11, instead of saying, well, they’re contained, worry about al Qaeda? Why go after Iraq at all? Could the oil market have contributed to this thinking? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-casus-belli-was-saddam-wanting-oil-to-be-traded-in-euros/633639.md?page=2)