The US is still on the gold standard

An interesting cast on Iraq in Skypeland brought out a host of nonIraqis who came to complain. They made all kinds of crazy claims. They said that Halliburton is stealing the oil from Iraq. They claimed that the US cannot print money since it is still secretly on the gold standard. (Seems to me that this ended in 1971:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Shock
However, you know how these conspiracy theories are; maybe we are all wrong, and the US is secretly still on the gold standard!)

They claimed that Sadam was attacked only because he started to sell his oil in Euros, not in US dollars. Funny, Sadam had already been under UN sanctions for over 10 years at that point, and had already been invaded by the UN forces in the early 1990s and had a no-fly zone implemented over it. The UN approved this, and the sales started on November 6 of 2000:
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/10/30/iraq.un.euro.reut/
There was not a hint of war against Iraq until well after September 11, 2001, and the second Iraq war did not start until March 20, 2003, a good 2.25 years after Sadam had UN approval to sell oil in Euros. Somehow, this argument does not seem particularly convincing to me.

At some point this argument descended into a heated discussion of who started the Iran-Iraq War (Iraq invaded first, after a long history of border skirmishes). There was also a factless argument about Iran asking Iraq to pay reparations after the end of the war (even though the war ended in 1988, I do not see much mention of this in the media before 2005).

A man from Egypt asked why the Americans were in Iraq. He was answered over and over and disagreed and claimed that all Iraqis loved Sadam Hussein. A man from Iraq in the cast disputed this claim, and the Egyptian rejected the Iraqis arguments, since of course the Egyptian knew more about Iraq than any Iraqi.

He was shocked to be told that there were American soldiers anywhere in Egypt. He was asked about a well-known American military hospital in Egypt which has the name "United States" on it. He said he visited it many times and was very surprised to hear this. Funny, but there is a lot of other evidence of US military presence in Egypt:
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30B12FD3E580C758CDDA90994D9404482&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fSubjects%2fM%2fMilitary%20Bases%20and%20Installations
http://www.afcesa.af.mil/userdocuments/publications/factsheets/Fetter.pdf http://www.monthlyreview.org/docs/0302map1.pdf

There is a substantial US military presence at Cairo West Air Base, for example:
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=42944

The more we pointed this out, the more belligerent he became, and he decided he had to leave.

An Israeli cast member pointed out that it is often Saudis, Turks and Egyptians who complain that the US is occupying Iraq. They seem to conveniently ignore the presence of large US military detachments in their own countries, stabilizing them and protecting them, giving them military aid and training them.