Storm raging over one third of the world's oil

The ultimatum given by American President George W. Bush to Saddam Hussein expired last night. Our newspaper, which closes at 19.00 hours, has the ingrate mission of informing you about events that are taking place after we have written these lines. Well, even if our paper’s journey to your desk may be outpaced by events, one thing is certain: starting today, in Iraq, a war is being waged above oil deposits that account for one third of the world reserves, as estimated by OPEC. We are saying that the war is being waged above and not over the oil deposits, as things are really more complicated than asserted by the conspiracy theories. Had the United States wanted Iraqi oil so very badly, they would have made up with Saddam, lifted the embargo and bought the oil. This would have been much cheaper than a war, which can lead to direct costs of 100 billion dollars and even more in economic losses, if things go awry and the American economy is hit by recession. To put it more simply, George Bush is taking a great risk, which cannot be grounded only on the desire to seize oil fields.
Still, another analysis comes to contradict this viewpoint. There are certain theories arguing that George Bush is merely continuing the work of other six American presidents, starting with Richard Nixon, who have tried to break America’s dependency on the oil of other countries, especially the Middle East states. Unfortunately, this dependency has only grown worse: in 1973, the United States imported 40% of the domestic needs, but today 60% of the oil products used on the American market are, in fact, imported. Consequently, Bush has supposedly come under pressure to put a leash on this oil weapon, which, were it used now against America, could deal more severe blows than the ones administrated by OPEC in the ’70s.
At any rate, war was expected last night. Contradictory reports suggested yesterday that the American and British troops were already engaged in activities needed to prepare an invasion, on the Iraqi territory. According to other Israeli sources, the invasion had already begun, helped by the surprise element, which would have been exactly the lack of a massive air raid. Anyhow, the military parade is getting close to an end, while the guns will start talking soon, unless the Iraqi manage to some up with a solution to get rid of Saddam Hussein in the next few hours. Saddam’s strongest weapon is crude. Even if he is beaten, he can deal a big blow to the oil price and, implicitly, to the world economy. But only if he manages to set his oil wells on fire and attack his neighbours’ crude reserves.
We have enumerated most of the scenarios, but saved the best for last: perhaps a solution will be found, to avoid the bloodshed.