Posted on 02/20/2017 6:13:09 AM PST by elhombrelibre
The U.S. military is not in Iraq "to seize anybody's oil", Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said, distancing himself from remarks by President Donald Trump at the start of a visit to Iraq on Monday.
Mattis, on his first trip to Iraq as Pentagon chief, is hoping to assess the war effort as U.S.-backed Iraqi forces launch a new push to evict Islamic State militants from their remaining stronghold in the city of Mosul.
But he is likely to face questions about Trump's remarks and actions, including a temporary ban on travel to the United States and for saying America should have seized Iraq's oil after toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Trump told CIA staff in January: "We should have kept the oil. But okay. Maybe you'll have another chance."
Mattis, however, flatly ruled out any such intent. "We're not in Iraq to seize anybody's oil," he told reporters traveling with him.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Also would hope that you would recognize the criminal hypocrisy in American policy over the last eight years. While Obama swore that he would destroy “ISIL’, and some very brave young Americans died or were maimed forever fighting them, he did virtually nothing to stop NATO ally Turkey from being the conduit by which recruits, supplies, funds and trade sustained them. Nor did he put a stop to the obvious funding the corrupt and vile Saudis were providing.
The amount of weapons and ammunition provided by various nations to fight ISIS has all been occuring in the last two years. The current operations were funded and in place in the last five months. I agree that Obama let this problem evolve and ignored it to protect the false narrative that he was out of Iraq. However, you’re ignoring that the ongoing effort has occurred. In addition, you assign motives to Russia that are not at all clear or demonstrable.
They’re there to defeat ISIS, which they are doing.
Kolbani was the turning point.
“We’re not in Iraq to seize anybody’s oil,”
***
This the quote they have from what Mattis said to reporters, yet the headline makes it sound like he made that statement to the Iraqis. Typical Reuters.
+1
Russia’s motives in Syria are understood only when considering Russia’s own nationalistic needs and strategic concerns. If nearby Syria were to become a fundamentalist, frontline jihadist state, it would become a base and haven for the Islamic militants who are terrifying and destabilizing southern Russia. These jihadists have even struck Moscow. Russia also has long term strategic interests in the Mideast and needs Syria as a base. Russia’s motives to oppose fundamentalist Islam is understood in this context. Fighting Islamic Sunni jihadists gives them common ground with Shiite Iranians. Kerry and Obama never understood these geo political realities when they promoted the “Arab Spring” and tried to overthrow Assad by supporting the not so decent “rebels”.
He was with their prime minister today.
Do you feel strongly about supporting Russia’s needs and interests?
Unlike many years ago, the USA doesn’t need OPEC oil anymore. Not with new technologies that make it possible to extract oil from places that wasn’t possible in the past, which has tremendously expanded the proven US oil and natural gas reserves.
Also, Iran—if they could get access to the latest Western oil extraction technology—could literally blow by Saudi Arabia in oil production. And the Iran could export all that newly-found oil through the oil terminal at Bandar Abbas, which means oil tankers won’t need to traverse the length of the Persian Gulf, either.
You’re right. The steal-their-oil canard was always left wing propaganda, anyway.
Not at all. However it is always necessary to understand the perspective and goals of any entity that one must confront. However what really terrifies the globalist one world/no borders Left is that a nationalistic heritage loving America which secures its borders and promotes its own nationalistic self interest ultimately will have more in common with a Russia, coming off almost ninety years of brutal destructive communism, that shares similar values than it has difference. Those who say nationalism is the ultimate cause of war simply do not understand the real causes of was and disharmony.
I am sure he was, but did he deliver such a quote to the PM or to any other government official there, or even to some random Iraqi citizen? Your statement does not change the point of my criticism.
You’re right. Nationalism had nothing to do with the First and Second World War. It’s Emmanuel Goldstein and the other Globalists who spread that poppycock. Hitler had no desire to put Germany above other nations. Stalin didn’t fall back on nationalism when Hitler attacked him. He encouraged the family of man, universal love, Catholicism. Nationalist have never fallen prey to the lure of national chauvinism. When I’ve been in Russia, I’ve noticed they accept that other nations should be free to choose their own path. They always say, let Ukraine be Ukraine.
There is no way for them to find out the conflicting statements. Probably, he told them that we’re going to steal their oil because, after all, that’s what the left always said our war against Saddam and al Qaeda was really about.
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