Has any president ever said that we should have plundered a country we have attacked?

[spanone]

'we should have kept the oil'

What a sick man.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

1. I remember lots of people on the right pushing for that during the Iraq War

I don’t think Dubya ever expressly stated that, however. (Members of his administration may have implied something similar, though.)

[dameatball]

2. Correct. The idea was floated, but it was such a mess it never came to anything as far as I know.

[hedda_foil]

17. Wolfowitz said the Iraq War would pay for itself because...oil.

[C_U_L8R]

3. Even Dick Cheney didn't dare say it out loud

This country has totally lost its way.

[unblock]

4. in fairness, yes, lots. this country was build on violent plundering.

ask the native americans or the mexicans or the spanish.

we try to be less crass about it these days, though. well, democrats do, anyway....

[oberliner]

5. Bush

That was the whole point of the war.

[John Fante]

8. He never said that. You're lying to deflect attention from Trump.

[oberliner]

9. Why the war in Iraq was fought for Big Oil

Yes, the Iraq War was a war for oil, and it was a war with winners: Big Oil.

It has been 10 years since Operation Iraqi Freedom's bombs first landed in Baghdad. And while most of the U.S.-led coalition forces have long since gone, Western oil companies are only getting started.

Before the 2003 invasion, Iraq's domestic oil industry was fully nationalized and closed to Western oil companies. A decade of war later, it is largely privatized and utterly dominated by foreign firms.

From ExxonMobil and Chevron to BP and Shell, the West's largest oil companies have set up shop in Iraq. So have a slew of American oil service companies, including Halliburton, the Texas-based firm Dick Cheney ran before becoming George W. Bush's running mate in 2000.

https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhasz/index.html

Telling the truth about Bush and his war for oil in Iraq has nothing to do with Trump who is a deranged and horrifically monstrous human being and awful president.

[John Fante]

12. Opening the door for the privatization of Iraqi oil reserves

isn't the same thing as flat-out stealing the oil and making it US property, which is what Trump advocates.

[oberliner]

13. Good point

But Bush actually had the US attack Iraq and their resources were plundered so I think he deserves to be singled out for disapprobation on that score.

[PJMcK]

16. Bush's team simply hid their thefts

Haliburton, Cheney's former company, was going bankrupt until the Iraq war came about. The oil services company profited massively from their contracts in Iraq following the U.S. invasion.

Maybe we didn't take the oil but certain companies did extremely well thanks to the Bush administration.

[PJMcK]

14. Why would oberliner do that?

Have you read any of oberliner's 49,168 posts? That's a true liberal Democrat and your suggestion, John, is ridiculous.

[John Fante]

18. Don't buy it for a second, sorry.

[John Fante]

19. As we speak, this "liberal democrat" is subtley implying that Trump's decision

to deploy the national guard to the southern border is a good idea. Because the big scary caravan is coming.

I've posted on enough message boards to spot a fake a mile away.

[brewens]

6. That's what a lot of the republicans were all jazzed about during the Iraq war. I sat

at our Eagles Lodge and listened to a couple right around "Mission Accomplished" day. One was saying, "I'm a Roman, I'm talking empire! Lets just take the oil!" I thought good luck with that. I thought it more likely that the oil companies would get to load it up at our expense and loot us for even more billions. This assclown was thinking he'd get $1.80 a gallon gas for years probably.

[ginnyinWI]

7. spoken like a true despot.

He doesn't know what this country stands for or what Democracy is.

[John Fante]

10. Trump loves the idea of committing war crimes. He's a thug at heart.

[dalton99a]

15. +1

[FarCenter]

11. James Knox Polk? William McKinley?