Rudy Giuliani defended Donald Trump’s assertion that during the Iraq War the United States should have seized the country’s oil, saying that “anything’s legal” in war, despite the fact that laws governing war prohibit just that.
Trump has repeatedly said the United States should have taken Iraq’s oil, including at a forum last week.
“I’ve always said — shouldn’t be there, but if we’re going to get out, take the oil,” Trump said at NBC’s “Commander-in-Chief Forum.” “If we would have taken the oil, you wouldn’t have ISIS, because ISIS formed with the power and the wealth of that oil.”
“You know, 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.”
There are, in fact, laws governing countries’ actions at war.
The Geneva Conventions prohibit countries from seizing others’ property, even in war — the exact justification the United States used during its 1990 invasion of Iraq, after Iraq had seized Kuwait’s oil.
But in an interview with ABC’s on “This Week,” George Stephanopoulos pressed the former New York City mayor over the legality of his claim, with Giuliani saying: “Of course it’s legal. It’s a war.”
“Until the war is over, anything’s legal,” he said, laughing. “If we’re going to have lost that many people in Iraq, we should have something to say about how that oil is distributed.”
The story has been updated.
