When I heard that Donald Trump was going to “moderate” a Republican debate, I was surprised to see the word “moderate,” — even used as a verb — in the same sentence as the flamboyant, mercurial, self-enamored, billionaire boor.
But hey, that’s show business for you.
Today, according to a column by Adam Tragone in Human Events, the king of Atlantic City has a new book out this week. In it, Trump highlights for those of us who found it, um, contrary to international law when Saddam Hussein marched into Kuwait to seize its oil in 1990, how the United States has every right to seize — yes, seize — Iraq’s plentiful oil fields. As Tragone writes:
In his explosive new book, Time to Get Tough, Trump expands and explains: “Call me old school, but I believe in the old warrior’s credo that ‘to the victor go the spoils.’ In other words, we don’t fight a war, hand over the keys to people who hate us, and leave. We win a war, take the oil to repay the financial costs we’ve incurred, and in so doing treat Iraq and everyone else fairly.”
“It’s hardly a radical idea,” continues Trump. “In September 2010, our own Government Accountability Office and others studied the issue in depth and concluded that a cost-sharing plan is feasible and wise.”
“From the very beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, I believed we should have hammered out the repayment plan with the Iraqis – through exiled Iraqi dissidents,” says Trump. “Oil revenues could have been used to reduce the sticker price for occupation. And there’s still no reason we can’t or shouldn’t implement a cost-sharing arrangement with Iraq.”
Why are Republican candidates eager to associate themselves with The Donald? I think they should refuse to give him the time of day, much less an hour to swan about the stage with them, flakking his harebrained ideas.
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