Editor – David Baker rightly dismisses the blog rumor that Iran will destroy America by selling oil for euros rather than dollars (“A= Web of oil intrigue,”

Unpublished L= etter to San Francisco Chronicle concerning the Web, Euros and the Iraq War. (4/7/06= )

On Tuesday, April 4, 2006, I sent the following letter= to the San Francisco Chronicle, wh= ich the Chronicle declined to publi= sh:

Editor – David Baker = rightly dismisses the blog rumor that Iran will destroy America= by selling oil for euros rather than dollars ( > “A Web of oil intrigue,”</a> – April 4). But h= e is wrong to ridicule the idea that “Amer= ica invaded Iraq…because Saddam Hussein started trading oil in euros.”

There were of course many r= easons for the Iraq invasion, but one cannot exclude this one. As Kevin Phillips notes in American Theocracy (p. 93), “= ;in 2002 and 2003, dollar protection [from the euro] posed a serious problem.”[1] President Bush swiftly confirmed this by arranging, two months after the invasion, for oil sales in Iraq to be returned from euros to dollars.[2]

His Executive Order of May = 2003, declaring a “national emergency,” directed oil earnings into a fund, controlled by the United States, for reconstruction projects in Iraq. One month later, the Financial Time= s, on June 5, 2003, confirmed that Iraqi oil sales were now switched back from euros to dollars.[3]

On November 14, 2002, Donald Rumsfeld told CBS News that U.S. policy on Iraq “has nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil." = This was a flat-out lie. The Chronicle should not allow its pages to perpetuate it.

PETER DALE SCOTT

Berkeley

http://www.peterdalescott.net

For the sake of your fact-c= hecker I have included footnotes, which of course are not for publication.

[end of unpublished letter]

I am posting my unpublished letter here on my web site for two reasons. The first is that r= ecent misguided predictions about the importance of Iran’s oil bourse shoul= d not be allowed to diminish the importance of euros as a factor affecting Americ= an oil policy. I shall reiterate in my forthcoming book, The Road to 9/11, some of what I had to say in 2002 about <a href=3D htt= p://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/iraq.html> “Bush's Deep Reasons for War on Iraq: Oil, Petrodollars, and = the OPEC Euro Question.”</a>

The second reas= on is to keep the San Francisco Chronicle honest, on matters dealing with oil and, just as importantly, with the Web.= The Chronicle is unquestionably one= of the better U.S. newspapers, and (at least until recently) one of the more liberal as well. = The paper has published excellent reports on Iraq from Anna Badkhen and Robert Collier, including a story from Collier on the devastating health effects f= rom U.S. weaponry containing depleted uranium (DU) in the 1991 Gulf War (<a href=3D http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D= /chronicle/archive/2003/01/13/MN233872.DTL> “Iraq links cancers to uranium weapon= s

U.S. = likely to use arms again in war”</a>, San Francisco Chronicle, 1/13/03). Just as the = New York Times has never in 40 yea= rs published any letters by me (not even one letter which was solicited by one= of its staff), so this is the first time in 40 years that the Chronicle has not p= ublished a letter by me.

I suspect that = the Chronicle’s motives for publ= ishing Baker’s attack on the Web were not disinterested. As the <a href=3D http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-chronicle11dec11,0,5115266.story?coll= =3Dla-home-business >Los Angeles Times </a>= ;(12/11/05) has reported, the Internet has adversely affected both the Chronicle’s circulation figures and its advertising revenues.[4] More and more people, like myself, have already read the best of the Chronicle’s morning news on = the Web the day before. Our numbers are increasing rapidly, even though many pe= ople like myself continue to subscribe to newspapers for other reasons (in my ca= se, the Sudoku puzzle and the TV sheet). One reason our numbers are increasing = is that important stories – such as the interdependence of America’s oil, Iraq, and euro policies ̵= 1; are found on the Web first, long before they reach the mainstream press and boo= ks like American Theocracy.[5]

The dilemma fac= ing the Chronicle is that facing the Democ= ratic Party. If they reach out towards the political culture of the Web, they distance themselves from the power structure of the status quo. If they do = not reach out towards this culture, they will probably contribute to, and even hasten, their demise.

It is partly fr= om my respect for the past achievements of the Chronicle that I hope they choose the former path. At the very least, they should cea= se from ridiculing the Web on those occasions when the Web is telling the trut= h. And they should hear from their readers when they do engage in such ridicul= e.

I invite reader= s to respond to these thoughts, both to myself at pdscottweb@hotmail.com, and to the Chronicle at letters@sfchronicle.com.