I've lived all over the country, I watched my pops go to work everyday serving the country as a pilot for 23 years. Even in high school I valued my countries founding documents and history and I even knew people that died for our freedoms that I value. Its pretty simple, really.
My grandfather fought with the RAF in WW2. He helped defeat the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain in 1940. Virtually all of those pilots were either British, Anzac, Canadian, Commonwealth or Poles. I, like most citizens, value
my country's values & freedoms & those who died to protect them. What's your point?
You can't say the same thing about the successes of my country, a lot of it is limited to my country alone.
Yes, it certainly is:
The CIA has been organizing “regime change” for 50 years. They have removed many governments that are unfriendly to US corporate interests and replaced them with regimes that are more likely to work closely and slavishly to carry out the economic and geopolitical desires of the US corporate elite.
In early 1963, Saddam had more important things to worry about than his outstanding bill at the Andiana Cafe. On February 8, a military coup in Baghdad, in which the Baath Party played a leading role, overthrew Qassim. Support for the conspirators was limited. In the first hours of fighting, they had only nine tanks under their control. The Baath Party had just 850 active members. But Qassim ignored warnings about the impending coup. What tipped the balance against him was the involvement of the United States.
~ Richard Sanders
(1)
The real reason we waged war with Iraq is that in November, 2000 Saddam Hussein refused to accept the U.S. dollar for his oil, and instead switched to the euro. Hussein also made a dramatic move by switching all of his U.N. reserves from the dollar to the euro. Thus, our invasion was nothing more than an attempt to maintain the dollar’s monopoly on oil purchases throughout the world. Stated differently, we wanted there to be no other choice than the dollar as the world’s sole petro-currency. Our attack, then, was an example to other countries – don’t convert your system over to the euro, and don’t challenge the dollar’s dominance.
And today, even though the U.S. is mired in a godawful war, we did thwart a widespread move to an alternate currency. In addition, we’ve also encircled the Middle East with military bases (especially Iran) so that any future uprisings or shifts away from “popular convention” can be immediately quelled.
To prove this is what happened, ask yourself: what is the first thing the United States did in 2003 after invading Iraq? Answer: after our troops “shocked and awed” their way into Baghdad, they immediately set-up a central bank! Now think about this scenario. We’re in the middle of a war, and what do we do first, above and beyond everything else? We set-up a bank! How much importance do you think this notion has? An enormous amount.
We then ripped-up all of Saddam’s old euro-based oil contracts, switched everything back to the dollar, and tied the whole damn thing back into the Federal Reserve. Our planners also cut-off the euro-based Oil-for-Food program within two months of “Mission Accomplished.”
Now when you think back to America’s invasion of Iraq, why do you think so many countries were perturbed by our actions? It’s because our Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) nullified all of the previous euro-based oil contracts that Saddam Hussein made between 1997-2002 with countries such as France, Russia, and China. The total worth of these agreements totaled $1.1 trillion! They all disappeared into thin air, and had to be renegotiated in dollars.
~ Victor Thorn
(2)
George Bush planned "regime change" in Iraq before becoming United States President in January 2001. The events of September 11, 2001, were the pretext for invasion of Iraq, not the reason.
The blueprint for the creation of a "global Pax America", to which Bush subscribes and which is driving the invasion of Iraq, was drawn up in September 2000 for Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush (George's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff).
The document, called Rebuilding America's Defences: strategies, forces and resources for a new century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think tank Project for the New American Century.
According to the document, written three months before Bush became president, "the US for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
The document outlines the global ambitions of the Bush Administration. It sets out a "blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests".
~ Kenneth Davidson
(3)
We all know that the U.S. is the worlds economic leader, but few people understand how the U.S. maintains its dominance. The answer lies the in the U.S. Dollar. The Dollar is the de facto world reserve currency it accounts for approximately two thirds of all official exchange reserves. More than four-fifths of all foreign exchange transactions and half of all world exports are denominated in Dollars. In addition, all IMF loans are denominated in Dollars.
But the more dollars there are circulating outside the U.S., or invested by foreign owners in American assets, the more the rest of the world has had to provide the U.S. with goods and services in exchange for these dollars. The dollars cost the U.S. next to nothing to produce, so the fact that the world uses the currency in this way means that the U.S. is importing vast quantities of goods and services virtually for free.
Since so many foreign-owned dollars are not spent on American goods and services, the U.S. is able to run a huge trade deficit year after year without apparently any major economic consequences. The most recently published figures, for example, show that in November of last year U.S. imports were worth 48% more than U.S. exports. No other country can run such a large trade deficit with impunity. The financial media tell us the U.S. is acting as the ‘consumer of last resort’ and the implication is that we should be thankful, but a more enlightening description of this state of affairs would be to say that it is getting a massive interest-free loan from the rest of the world.
However, with Europes introduction of the Euro, things are beginning to change. One of the stated economic objectives, and perhaps the primary objective, when setting up the Euro was to turn it into a reserve currency to challenge the Dollar so that Europe too could get something for nothing.
This however would be a disaster for the U.S. Not only would they lose a large part of their annual subsidy of effectively free goods and services, but countries switching to Euro reserves from dollar reserves would bring down the value of the U.S. currency. Imports would start to cost Americans a lot more and as increasing numbers of those holding dollars began to spend them, the U.S. would have to start paying its debts by supplying in goods and services to foreign countries, thus reducing American living standards. As countries and businesses converted their dollar assets into euro assets, the U.S. property and stock market bubbles would, without doubt, burst. The Federal Reserve would no longer be able to print more money to reflate the bubble, as it is currently openly considering doing, because, without lots of eager foreigners prepared to mop them up, a serious inflation would result which, in turn, would make foreigners even more reluctant to hold the U.S. currency and thus heighten the crisis.
~ Chris Brunner
(4)
To hear supporters of George Bush now, the only reason he invaded Iraq was to introduce democracy to that country, and the reasons we are still there are to combat the terrorists who entered Iraq after we invaded and to save face. But in the weeks and months leading up to the invasion it was quite a different story. Back then the Bush Administration's pitch to the American people was: "Saddam Hussein has chemical and biological weapons and even nuclear weapons that he plans to give to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda who will then smuggle them into the United States and kill tens of thousands of people." Even if you knew nothing about Iraqi history and politics, this argument should have appeared dubious on the face of it. In the terrorist attacks that have taken place inside the United States, including the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and the 9/11 attacks, none of the perpetrators needed to smuggle weapons into the country. Whatever they needed, they found right here inside the United States.
I believe that there were three important informal groups within the Bush Administration that were anxious to invade Iraq, although certain individuals belonged to more than one group. These groups were 1) war profiteers 2) neo-conservative ideologues and 3) supporters of Israel.
~ David Wallenchinsky
These articles may be a bit dated now, but note that they are all written by Americans.
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