We said it before: fear of petro-euros is one of the unstated reasons driving the Iraq war. As Scoop reports:

In 1999, Iraq, with the world's second largest oil reserves, switched to trading its oil in euros. American analysts fell about laughing; Iraq had just made a mistake that was going to beggar the nation. But two years on, alarm bells were sounding; the euro was rising against the dollar, Iraq had given itself a huge economic free kick by switching.

Iran started thinking about switching too; Venezuela, the fourth largest oil producer, began looking at it and has been cutting out the dollar by bartering oil with several nations including America's bete noir, Cuba. Russia is seeking to ramp up oil production with Europe (trading in euros) an obvious market...

This debate is not about whether America would suffer from losing the US dollar monopoly on oil trading -- that is a given -- rather it is about exactly how hard the USA would be hit. The smart money seems to be saying the impact would be in the range from severe to catastrophic. The USA could collapse economically.

The above, plus this excellent WSWS essay on the trouble looming for the American economy put paid to the Administration's nobler claims for the Iraq war and offer some insights into the deep denial going on around here.

The WSWS piece is spot-on in many respects. It even avoids the usual socialist pitfall of being absolutely humorless. Of particular note in this one is WSWS's derisive reference to the Democratic Party as 'the stinking corpse of bourgeois liberalism."

Ah, one can just hear that timeless epithet, "running dogs of state capitalism," echoing 'round the marbled halls and ivied walls of the old alma mater? Such sweet nostalgia it evokes.