[pjw] NEWS: Trump reveals thoughts on "keeping" Iraq's oil (NBC 1/25)

[Peace and Justice Works]

This is just unbelievable that ANY world leader can talk like this about 
another sovereign nation, but this is the leader of the United States, 
where this organization is based. And we've been talking about the US war 
on Iraq for over 25 years, and the movement more or less dropped the 
slogan "no blood for oil" because it was clear keeping US troops in Iraq 
was also about having a strategic foothold in the "Middle East." But now 
here's President Trump saying we should have kept the oil and he's 
thinking about how to go back and get it. Unbelievable.
dan h
Peace and Justice Works
   Iraq Affinity Group

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/transcript-abc-news-anchor-david-muir-interviews-president/story?id=45047602

[note, this exchange is more than 3/4 of the way into the interview after 
a long, long back and forth about how many votes Trump won, how big the 
crowd was at the inauguration--no mention of the protests, and how Trump 
wants to bring back waterboarding... which you can read for yourself, it 
just made me sick.--dan]

  DAVID MUIR: You brought up Iraq and something you said that could affect 
American troops in recent days. You said, "We should've kept the oil but 
okay maybe we'll have another chance." What did you mean by that?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, we should've kept the oil when we got out. And, you 
know, it's very interesting, had we taken the oil, you wouldn't have ISIS 
because they fuel themselves with the oil. That's where they got the 
money. They got the money from leaving -- when we left, we left Iraq, 
which wasn't a government. It's not a government now.

And by the way, and I said something else, if we go in and do this. You 
have two nations, Iraq and Iran. And they were essentially the same 
military strength. And they'd fight for decades and decades. They'd fight 
forever. And they'd keep fighting and it would go -- it was just a way of 
life. We got in, we decapitated one of those nations, Iraq. I said, "Iran 
is taking over Iraq." That's essentially what happened.

DAVID MUIR: So, you believe we can go in and take the oil.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: We should have taken the oil. You wouldn't have ISIS if 
we took the oil. Now I wasn't talking about it from the standpoint of ISIS 
because the way we got out was horrible. We created a vacuum and ISIS 
formed. But had we taken the oil something else would've very good 
happened. They would not have been able to fuel their rather unbelievable 
drive to destroy large portions of the world.

DAVID MUIR: You've heard the critics who say that would break all 
international law, taking the oil. But I wanna get to the words ...

(OVERTALK)

DAVID MUIR: ... that you ...

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Wait, wait, can you believe that? Who are the critics who 
say that? Fools.

DAVID MUIR: Let, let me ...

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I don't call them critics. I call them fools.

DAVID MUIR: ... let me talk about your words ...

PRESIDENT TRUMP: We should've kept -- excuse me. We should've taken the 
oil. And if we took the oil you wouldn't have ISIS. And we would have had 
wealth. We have spent right now $6 trillion in the Middle East. And our 
country is falling apart.

(OVERTALK)

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Our roads -- excuse me. Our roads, our bridges, our 
schools, it's falling apart. We have spent as of one month ago $6 trillion 
in the Middle East. And in our country we can't afford to build a school 
in Brooklyn or we can't afford to build a school in Los Angeles. And we 
can't afford to fix up our inner cities. We can't afford to do anything. 
Look, it's time. It's been our longest war. We've been in there for 15, 16 
years. Nobody even knows what the date is because they don't really know 
when did we start. But it's time. It's time.

DAVID MUIR: What got my attention, Mr. President, was when you said, 
"Maybe we'll have another chance."

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, don't let it get your attention too much because 
we'll see what happens. I mean, we're gonna see what happens. You know, I 
told you and I told everybody else that wants to talk when it comes to the 
military I don't wanna discuss things.

I wanna let -- I wanna let the action take place before the talk takes 
place. I watched in Mosul when a number of months ago generals and 
politicians would get up and say, "We're going into Mosul in four months." 
Then they'd say, "We're going in in three months, two months, one month. 
We're going in next week."

Okay, and I kept saying to myself, "Gee, why do they have to keep talking 
about going in?" All right, so now they go in and it is tough because 
they're giving the enemy all this time to prepare. I don't wanna do a lot 
of talking on the military. I wanna talk after it's finished, not before 
it starts.