The most probable reason for the US invasion of Iraq

Or what if, long before that comes to pass,
exporters of oil simply cease to price it in ever-
devaluing dollars, and instead make a mint by
switching to the rising euro and/or a basket of
East Asian currencies? That would at one stroke
vastly diminish the world demand for and price of
dollars by obliging anyone who wants to buy oil
to purchase and increase the demand price of the
euro or yen/yuan instead of the dollar. That
would crash the dollar and tumble Uncle Sam in
one fell swoop, as foreign - and even domestic -
owners of dollars would sell off as many of them
as fast as they could, and other countries'
central banks would switch their reserves out of
dollars and away from Uncle Sam's no-longer-safe
haven. That would drive the dollar down even
more, and of course halt any more dollar inflow
to Uncle Sam from the foreigners who have been
financing his consumption spree. Since selling
oil for falling dollars instead of rising euros
is evidently bad business, the world's largest
oil exporters in Russia and OPEC have been
considering doing just that. In the meantime,
they have only raised the dollar price of oil, so
that in euro terms it has remained approximately
stable since 2000. So far, many oil exporters and
others still place their increased amount of
dollars with Uncle Sam, even though he now offers
an ever less attractive and less safe haven, but
Russia is now buying more euros with some of its
dollars.

I'm convinced this is why Uncle Sam is in
Iraq. It's a central staging area in the oil rich
Middle East to attempt to prevent the use
of euros for oil payments.

The rest.

Even though reading of the political economy's
machinations shown in the article below give me hives,
I think they're important to know.

Iraq suspended "Oil for Food" program sales,
under which Iraqi oil is traded -- more than two
thirds of it to U.S. concerns -- in exchange for
currency. Iraq formally asked the United Nations,
which administers "Oil for Food," to change the
currency in Iraq's U.N.-managed accounts from
dollars to euros. That may well have been
Saddam's greatest mistake.

In due course, the U.N. bureaucrats ruled that
Iraq could indeed sell it's oil for any currency
it chose. Iraqi oil is now paid for mainly in
euros. Uh-oh!

The evidence.