NEW YORK - Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has indicated that he would destroy oilfields in the Middle East, insisting that they're a primary source of income for terrorist groups such as ISIS.
The billionaire businessman has always advocated for what he calls “taking the oil”, but now in an interview with The New York Times published Sunday, he is calling for more drastic measures to cut off the terror group’s main revenue stream.
“I would say knock the hell out of the oil, and do it because it’s a primary source of money for ISIS,” he said, adding that the US should have taken control of oil while in Iraq. “We should’ve taken it … Now we have to destroy the oil. We don’t do it. I just can’t believe we don’t do it.”
He added that the US should never have been involved with Iraq. “We shouldn’t have been there, we shouldn’t have destroyed the country,” he said.
Saddam Hussein was a “bad guy,” but he was very good at killing terrorists, he said. "He killed terrorists like nobody, all right? Now it’s Harvard of terrorism. You want to be a terrorist, you go to Iraq," he said.
If elected, Trump told the Times he might also halt the purchase of oil from Saudi Arabia and other Arab allies because they've been unwilling to send their troops in on the ground to fight against ISIS despite efforts by President Barack Obama to have them join a US-led coalition.
“If Saudi Arabia was without the cloak of American protection,” Trump said during the interview on foreign policy, spread over two phone calls on Friday, “I don’t think it would be around.”
Hours after the interview was published, the former head of Obama's Auto Task Force, Steven Rattner, tweeted that Trump "has no idea how oil market works. We take only about 10 percent of what Saudi Arabia produces."
When asked about his strategy to defeat ISIS in Syria, Trump said the approach of fighting the terror group and the country's President Bashar Assad simultaneously is "madness, and idiocy".
"The far bigger problem than Assad is ISIS, I've always felt that," he said. "Assad is, you know I'm not saying Assad is a good man, 'cause he's not, but our far greater problem is not Assad, it's ISIS."
When asked during the 100-minute interview what would merit humanitarian intervention under a Trump presidency, the real estate mogul suggested that it would be determined based on how "friendly" a country has been toward the US.
"I'd have to see what's going on in the region and you just cannot have a blanket. The one blanket you could say is, 'protection of our country’," he said. "That's the one blanket. After that it depends on the country, the region, how friendly they've been toward us."
Trump stopped short of being specific with his foreign policy proposals, saying that he "wouldn't want [other countries and allies] to know what my real thinking is."
SANDERS CRUSHES HILLARY IN THREE STATES
AFP adds: Bernie Sanders made a clean sweep of Democratic election contests in Alaska, Hawaii and Washington, although he barely dented the formidable lead enjoyed by frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the battle for the party's presidential nomination.
US news networks showed Sanders winning by wide margins Saturday's caucus votes in all three western states.
In Washington - the biggest prize with 101 delegates up for grabs - Sanders won with an estimated 72.1 percent, against 27.7 for Clinton.
In Hawaii, 71 percent of Democratic caucus-goers supported Sanders, against 29 percent for Clinton.
In Alaska, Sanders' margin of victory was 79.2 percent, against 20.8 percent for Clinton.
The 74-year-old Vermont senator celebrated his victories via Twitter late Saturday.
"Thank you, Alaska! Together we are sending a message that this government belongs to all of us," he wrote.
"Washington, thank you for your huge support! It is hard for anybody to deny that our campaign has the momentum."
Sanders maintains he has a path to winning the nomination and is plowing ahead state by state, ahead of another round of primary and caucus contests next month.
But the delegate math still dramatically favors Clinton, who headed into Saturday's contests with a big lead among pledged delegates and an even larger advantage when party officials known as "superdelegates" are factored into the equation.
At a campaign rally in the midwestern state of Wisconsin, Sanders declared - despite pundits' negative predictions - that the tide was now turning in his favour.
"We knew things were going to improve as we headed west," he said to cheers. "We are making significant inroads in Secretary Clinton's lead and we have... a path toward victory."
"This is what momentum is about," Sanders told his supporters.
"Don't let anybody tell you we can't win the nomination or win the general election. We're going to do both of those things."
Going into Saturday, Clinton had already amassed 1,711 delegates, including super-delegates who are unelected by voters, compared to 952 for Sanders, according to a CNN count.
To win the Democratic nomination at the July convention in Philadelphia, 2,383 delegates are needed.
Sanders has drawn strong support from voters with a populist message that rails against police brutality, a too-low minimum wage, soaring student debt and other societal ills.
In particular, millennials and first-time voters have been flocking to Sanders's message of economic equality, universal health care, and his call to reduce the influence of billionaires on the campaign finance system. "Real change historically always takes place from the bottom on up when millions of people come together," Sanders said to applause and cheers from a crowd Friday in the Seattle's Safeco Field baseball stadium.
"We need a political revolution!"
He repeated that same message on Saturday in Wisconsin, the next state to hold primaries, on April 5.
Sanders faces an uphill battle in the delegate race, in large part because Democrats allocate delegates proportionally by state, making it all but impossible to overtake Clinton. The former first lady, meanwhile, appears to already have shifted her focus toward November's general election.
Clinton delivered a somber counterterrorism speech Wednesday in the aftermath of the deadly attacks in Brussels, using it as an opportunity to launch vigorous assaults on Trump and US Senator Ted Cruz and warn their "reckless" foreign policies would harm US interests.
"We need to rely on what actually works, not bluster that alienates our partners and doesn't make us any safer," she said.
Saturday's three contests were caucuses, essentially neighborhood meetings where voters can discuss political platforms and debate the merits of the candidates.