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Saddam threatened to and had plans to move to the Euro from USD for oil reserves. Saddam was assassinated. Gaddafi had plans to develop a gold backed African U

Saddam threatened to and had plans to move to the Euro from USD for oil reserves. Saddam was assassinated. Gaddafi had plans to develop a gold backed African Union currency and he was assassinated. I'm not one for conspiracy theories but I am suspicious of "coincidences" in geo-politics that always end up favouring the same actors (when there is accompanying proven motive to boot).

true_religion 8y ago
Sure, if you are a brutal dictatorship already and try to upset global financial markets, after a multiyear struggle with the leading military power, while having a huge homegrown resistance... then you might get assassinated. It is not a coincidence, but it is also not simply because of just one thing.
yourbandsucks 8y ago
The US had a multi-decade plan to take Saddam and Gaddafi out the instant we could get away with it, for a whole host of reasons, and the dollar-denomination thing is like #15 on that list at best. Some euros or RMB becoming dollars for 5 seconds before they become oil is just not that big of a deal.
nradov 8y ago
Saddam Hussein wasn't assassinated. He was captured, tried, and executed by other Iraqis. We can argue about the legitimacy of Iraq's criminal justice system but that's far from being an assassination. A similar situation applied to Gaddafi.
- rorykoehler 8y ago
  I used the term loosely. The US created the situation which led to both their deaths.
  - nradov 8y ago
    Precise language matters. You could loosely state that any war in which the losing head of state ended up dead was an "assassination", but that's not what the word actually means.
    - jazzyjackson 8y ago
      I see "assassination" as "killing a particular person as a political move" - Iraq and Libya were very long-winding paths to get a particular person killed. But I agree it is somewhat imprecise in that it was not the CIA that ordered the angry mob on Qaddafi, he wrote those circumstances himself.
onemoresoop 8y ago
Rings a bell. Ceausescu, Romania's president a.k.a. dictator, planned to do the same and was murdered as well.

true_religion 8y ago

Sure, if you are a brutal dictatorship already and try to upset global financial markets, after a multiyear struggle with the leading military power, while having a huge homegrown resistance... then you might get assassinated. It is not a coincidence, but it is also not simply because of just one thing.

yourbandsucks 8y ago

The US had a multi-decade plan to take Saddam and Gaddafi out the instant we could get away with it, for a whole host of reasons, and the dollar-denomination thing is like #15 on that list at best. Some euros or RMB becoming dollars for 5 seconds before they become oil is just not that big of a deal.

nradov 8y ago

Saddam Hussein wasn't assassinated. He was captured, tried, and executed by other Iraqis. We can argue about the legitimacy of Iraq's criminal justice system but that's far from being an assassination. A similar situation applied to Gaddafi.

rorykoehler 8y ago
I used the term loosely. The US created the situation which led to both their deaths.
- nradov 8y ago
  Precise language matters. You could loosely state that any war in which the losing head of state ended up dead was an "assassination", but that's not what the word actually means.
  - jazzyjackson 8y ago
    I see "assassination" as "killing a particular person as a political move" - Iraq and Libya were very long-winding paths to get a particular person killed. But I agree it is somewhat imprecise in that it was not the CIA that ordered the angry mob on Qaddafi, he wrote those circumstances himself.

onemoresoop 8y ago

Rings a bell. Ceausescu, Romania's president a.k.a. dictator, planned to do the same and was murdered as well.