Giuliani: “Of course” taking Iraq’s oil would have been legal: “Until the war is over, anything is legal.” #ThisWeek https://t.co/VR7lvCJAws
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) September 11, 2016
Donald Trump has never shied away from saying the United States should’ve just taken Iraq’s oil while fighting Saddam Hussein. He repeated as much during his appearance at NBC’s Commander In Chief forum earlier this week according to the LA Times:
“It used to be, ‘To the victor belong the spoils,” Trump said. “Now, there was no victor there, believe me. There was no victor. But I always said: Take the oil.”
Trump said that it would have required leaving only “a certain group behind” to pump Iraq’s oil and that doing so would have prevented the rise of Islamic State. Trump has often said he would use the money to compensate U.S. military families for their sacrifices.
As the Times points out, this is not the way it would work in real life. Many experts quoted by the Times calls this type of thinking “antiquated” and “barbaric,” noting that every nation in the region would’ve been against the United States if that decision was made. Still, Trump does have his supporters. Rudy Giuliani tackled the subject on ABC Sunday morning, telling George Stephanopoulos that any taking of any oil would be legal because it is war.
https://twitter.com/SopanDeb/status/774975276254199808
“To the victor belong the spoils” until the war ends. Don’t worry about the consequences until then. There’s plenty of history to support this thinking, of course, so it makes sense that Trump and Giuliani would make it a campaign issue. If there’s never any consequences, everything truly can be legal in war.