{"id":49265,"date":"2019-10-30T05:39:28","date_gmt":"2019-10-30T10:39:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49265"},"modified":"2019-10-30T05:39:34","modified_gmt":"2019-10-30T10:39:34","slug":"retired-general-trumps-syria-oil-plan-turns-us-troops-into-pirates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49265","title":{"rendered":"Retired General: Trump’s Syria Oil Plan Turns US Troops Into “Pirates”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Retired General: Trump’s Syria Oil Plan Turns US Troops Into “Pirates”<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

After President Trump suggested on Sunday<\/a> that he would like to make a deal with Exxon Mobil or \u201cone of our great companies\u201d to go into occupied Syria and take the oil, one of the few former top defense officials to explicitly condemn the plan which clearly smacks of naked US imperialism<\/a> was retired General Barry McCaffrey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Referencing Trump’s comments, an outraged McCaffrey posed the question on Twitter<\/a>, “WHAT ARE WE BECOMING… PIRATES?” <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He further stressed that\u00a0the oil\u00a0“belongs to Syria”<\/strong>\u00a0and that ultimately “we lack Congressional authority to stay” in the country at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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US convoy this week in northeast Syria. Image source: AP<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The former US Army four star and MSNBC regular was one the few mainstream pundits this week to critique Washington’s Syria policy by questioning the entirety of America’s presence there in the first place, essentially calling it ‘illegal’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most establishment commentators have thus far ignored the imperialist aggression aspect of what appears a big oil grab on yet another US-occupied piece of the Middle East, and opted to argue the Pentagon should be “doing more” for the Syrian Kurds\u00a0\u2014<\/em>meaning more of the same endless US occupation.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/strong>\u2714<\/strong><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The United States Military Securing Syria’s Oil. https:\/\/twitter.com\/RojavaNetwork\/status\/1189286318095904769 \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can’t show you everything!We automatically hide video that might contain sensitive content.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Show Media<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On Monday Defense Secretary Mark Esper spelled out<\/a> that a deployment of some few hundred US troops will deny Syrian government access to oilfields in the northeast<\/strong>, instead ensuring they stay in Kurdish-led SDF hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The immediate justification given by the Pentagon chief was the usual ‘defeat ISIS’ mantra (despite, ironically, their leader Baghdadi being taken out in Saturday’s US raid into Idlib). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Retired General: Trump’s Syria Oil Plan Turns US Troops Into “Pirates” After President Trump suggested on Sunday that he would like to make a deal with Exxon Mobil or \u201cone of our great companies\u201d to go into occupied Syria and take the oil, one of the few former top defense officials to explicitly condemn the plan which clearly smacks of naked US […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[27462,827,4318],"class_list":["post-49265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-geopolitics","tag-syrian-oil-fields","tag-united-states","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49266,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49265\/revisions\/49266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}