Giuliani Defends Trump’s Claim US Should Have Taken Iraq’s Oil: “It’s A War. Until The War Is Over, Anything Is Legal”

From the September 11 edition of ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos:

Video file

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (HOST): One of the things that Donald Trump also said on Thursday night, again, is that we should have taken the oil of Iraq. Even if you could do that practically, and most experts say you couldn’t, wouldn’t that just be theft?

RUDY GIULIANI: Well, no, he said take it so that the Islamic State then would not have had it available.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But he said leave a force back there in take it.

GIULIANI: Leave a force back there and take it, and make sure it’s distributed in a proper way. And basically --

STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s not legal, is it?

GIULIANI: Of course it’s legal. It’s a war. Until the war is over, anything is legal. That oil becomes a very critical issue. First of all, if that oil wasn’t there, we wouldn’t have the Islamic State. So when he says things like Obama and Hillary are the founder this Islamic State, he doesn’t mean literally, and he follows it by saying they would get the MVP award. That oil is what makes the Islamic State so rich. Had we held that oil, made sure that it was equitably distributed in Iraq, we would been able to --

STEPHANOPOULOS: He says we should have taken it.

GIULIANI: He [INAUDIBLE] said we should take it for ourselves necessarily, he said we should secure it so it doesn’t get taken by terrorist forces, and then we can have some say, some control over the distribution of it.

Related:

Washington Post: Trump’s Illegal, Impossible, And ‘Beyond Goofy’ Idea Of Seizing Iraq’s Oil