Real estate mogul Donald Trump released a video on YouTube following the death of Muammar Gadhafi in which he complained about the fact that the Libyan strongman was killed before the United States had a chance to take the country’s oil reserves.
Libya’s National Transitional Council announced Thursday that Gadhafi had been captured and later died during the assault on his hometown Sirte.
“Big deal,” he said. “What do we get out of it? They have the oil. The rebels would have given us everything if we had some leader that knew how to negotiate.”
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“The rebels were being routed four months ago,” Trump continued. “Absolutely routed by Gadhafi and his men. Even with all of our support and all the support of NATO, it was very hard to crack them. So here is what happens. We spend billions and billions and billions of dollars, we just absolutely blast the hell out of them, the rebels then go in, take over the place, and now if we ask for oil they give us nothing.”
He said Obama should not have intervened in Libya until the rebels agreed to give 50 percent of their oil to the U.S.
Libya produced about 1.6 million barrels per day before the uprising against Gadhafi.
It is not the first time Trump has called for the U.S. to take another country’s oil. In April, he said that if he were president he would seize $1.5 trillion from Iraq’s oil profits to “reimburse” the U.S.-led invasion — which would be a war crime according to the Hague Convention.
