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AP FACT CHECK: Trump glosses over Iraq’s sovereignty
WASHINGTON – A claim from the presidential debate and how it stacks up with the facts:
TRUMP: “Had we taken the oil (in Iraq), and we should have taken the oil, ISIS would not have been able to form.”
THE FACTS: Donald Trump’s assertion that the U.S. should have seized Iraq’s natural resources would have required that it also seize control of the country. That ignores the fact that Iraq is a sovereign nation, and the U.S. at no point threatened to take possession of it.
To achieve Trump’s stated goal of destroying Islamic State militants’ revenue stream, the U.S. has bombed oil facilities in Iraq. The bombing was designed to render the oil facilities inoperable, but not destroy them, so Iraq could rebuild its economy with its oil when the conflict ended.
EDITOR’S NOTE _ A look at the veracity of claims by political figures
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