Giuliani on Taking Iraqi Oil: ‘Until the War Is Over, Anything’s Legal’

Sunday on ABC’s “This Weeks,” Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump surrogate and former Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani defended Trump’s proposal to take the oil of Iraq by saying, “Until the war is over, anything’s legal.”

Partial transcript as follows:

STEPHANOPOULOS: They do emerge from September 11. And one of the things that Donald Trump also said on Thursday night, again, is that we should’ve 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?

GIULIANI: Well, no. I — 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 and take it, though.

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

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s not legal, is it?

GIULIANI: Of course it’s legal. It’s a war. Until the war is over, anything’s 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 were the founder of the Islamic State, he doesn’t mean — he doesn’t mean literally. 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 within Iraq, we would’ve been able to —

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: He says we should’ve taken it.

GIULIANI: He should we take it for ourselves necessarily, that 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. One of the major problems is between the Kurds and the Sunnis and the Shiites is the oil. And the distribution of it. Now if we’re going to have lost that many people in Iraq, we should have something to say about how that oil is distributed. That would’ve been the reason I would’ve done it. Maybe I wouldn’t have anticipated, but it certainly would’ve been good if this had been done. If we had secured that oil, we would not be dealing with ISIS today. They wouldn’t exist.

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN