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More deep background, another (free) book by John Coleman: The Rothschild Dynasty. This has some interesting tidbits. For example, a report of an 1876 conversation with Bismarck (the Bismarck), who is quoted to have said:

The division of the United States into two federations was decided long before the Civil War by the High Financial Powers of Europe. Those bankers were afraid of the United States, if they remained in one block and as one nation would attain economical and financial independence, which would upset their domination over the World. The voice of the Rothschilds predominated. They saw tremendous booty if they substituted two feeble democracies indebted to them, to the vigorous Republic, confident and self-providing.
Lincoln never suspected these underground machinations. He was Anti-Slaverist, and he was elected as such. But his character prevented him from being the man of one party. When he had affairs in his hands, he perceived that these sinister financiers of Europe, the Rothschilds, wanted him to be the executor of their designs. They made the rupture between the North and the South imminent! The Masters of Finance in Europe made this rupture definitive in order to exploit it to the utmost...
Lincoln's personality surprised them. They thought to easily dupe the candidate woodcutter. His candidature did not trouble them. But Lincoln read their plots and soon understood that the South was not the worst foe, but the financiers. He did not confide his apprehensions; he watched the gestures of the Hidden Hand. He did not wish to expose publicly which would disconcert the ignorant masses.
He decided to eliminate the International Bankers by establishing a system of loans, allowing the states to borrow directly from the people without intermediary.
He did not study finance, but his robust good sense revealed to him, that the source of any wealth, resides in the work and the economy of the nation. He opposed emissions through the International Financiers. He obtained from Congress the right to borrow from the people by selling to it the bonds of States.
The local banks were only too glad to help such a system and the government and the People escaped the plots of the foreign financiers. They understood at once that the United States would escape their grip. The death of Lincoln was resolved. Nothing is easier than to find a fanatic to strike. The death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom.

That is to say, the War Between the States was set up by the Rothschilds to prevent the United States from becoming a world power. By strength of character and common sense, Lincoln foiled them -- and hence had to be killed.

Lots of sauce with this book, which also blames the [Y] family for the French Revolution, the Federal Reserve, WWI, and the Russian Revolution (where the book ends chronologically).

The Rothschild Dynasty appears to have been published in 2006, and the introductory material mentions the war in Iraq. The final paragraph of the book is this:

In conclusion how amazing it is, that the same leaders of the elite of the world, who have the power to excite wars for their own benefits, can also break and consign to obscurity, those formerly important national leaders who oppose their grand designs, particularly their plans to establish a New World Order operation inside a World structure of a single One World Government dictatorship. Unless a counter force can be erected to oppose these plans, the world could very well be plunged into the darkness of a brutal dictatorship by the year 2025.

I am deeply grateful that a worthy "counter force" has come to the fore.