{"id":10764,"date":"2017-02-20T13:37:14","date_gmt":"2017-02-20T13:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=10764"},"modified":"2017-02-20T13:37:41","modified_gmt":"2017-02-20T13:37:41","slug":"not-seize-oil-us-defense-secretary-arrives-baghdad-unannounced-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=10764","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We\u2019re not here to seize oil\u2019: US defense secretary arrives in Baghdad on unannounced visit"},"content":{"rendered":"
US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has arrived in Baghdad on an unannounced visit, reportedly for discussions on defeating the Islamic State terrorist group. He said earlier on Monday that the US military is not in Iraq \u201cto seize anybody\u2019s oil.\u201d<\/div>\n
\n

\u201cI think all of us here in this room, all of us in America, have generally paid for our gas and oil all along and I\u2019m sure that we will continue to do so in the future,\u201d<\/em> Mattis told a small group of reporters traveling with him, while discussing his top objectives for the trip, Reuters reports.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not in Iraq to seize anybody\u2019s oil,\u201d<\/em> he stressed.<\/p>\n

Mattis appears to have distanced himself from remarks made by President Donald Trump in a speech last month, when the new Republican president told CIA officials: \u201cWe should\u2019ve kept the oil. But, OK, maybe we\u2019ll have another chance.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

He later explained his position in a lengthy interview with ABC.<\/p>\n

Trump said Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS\/ISIL) would not have become a global threat if it hadn\u2019t taken over Iraq\u2019s oil industry when the country was left weakened by the war.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should\u2019ve kept the oil when we got out. And, you know, it\u2019s very interesting, had we taken the oil, you wouldn\u2019t have ISIS, because they fuel themselves with the oil. That\u2019s where they got the money. They got the money\u2026 when we left, we left Iraq, which wasn\u2019t a government.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe created a vacuum and ISIS formed. But had we taken the oil, something else very good would\u2019ve happened. They would not have been able to fuel their rather unbelievable drive to destroy large portions of the world,\u201d<\/em> Trump noted, while adding that Iraq\u2019s oil could have been beneficial for the United States too, as the country\u2019s budget has been drained by involvement in Middle East wars.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Iraqi forces launched a major military operation to retake the western part of Mosul from the Islamic State terrorists.<\/p>\n

Last week, Iraqi aircraft dropped millions of leaflets in western Mosul, calling on residents to get ready to welcome the Iraqi troops, as the siege on the militants continues.<\/p>\n

In October, Iraqi forces, backed by the US-led international coalition, launched a campaign to retake Mosul. Last month the US-led coalition admitted to \u201cunintentionally\u201d<\/em> killing at least 188 civilians in Syria and Iraq since 2014, when the airstrikes against Islamic State began.<\/p>\n

As of February 14, 2017, the US-led coalition had conducted a total of 18,250 strikes (11,102 Iraq \/ 7,148 Syria), the US Department of Defense reported.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has arrived in Baghdad on an unannounced visit, reportedly for discussions on defeating the Islamic State terrorist group. He said earlier on Monday that the US military is not in Iraq \u201cto seize anybody\u2019s oil.\u201d \u201cI think all of us here in this room, all of us in America, have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":10766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}