Nixon floated the dollar in order to pay for the cost of a war in which, during the period of 1970-1972 alone, he ordered more than four million tons of explosives and incendiaries dropped on cities and villages across Indochina-causing one senator to dub him "the greatest bomber of all time." The debt crisis was a direct result of the need to pay for the bombs, or, to be more precise, the vast military infrastructure required to deliver them. This was what was causing such an enormous strain on the U.S. gold reserves. Many hold that by floating the dollar, Nixon converted the U.S. currency into pure "fiat money" - mere pieces of paper, intrinsically worthless, that were treated as money only because the United States government insisted that they should be. In that case, one could well argue that U.S. miltary power was now the only thing backing up the currency. In a certain sense this is true, but the notion of "fiat money" assumes that money really "was" gold in the first place. Really we are dealing with another variation of credit money.