Pamela Engel
BI
Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump's vague strategy to combat Islamic State extremists in the Middle East isn't very likely to work.
A top US general, who commanded troops in Iraq from 2008 to 2010, on Wednesday explained the holes in Trump's strategy, The Washington Post reports.
Earlier this week, billionaire real-estate developer Trump said he would send American troops to Iraq to target the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh), adding that the US would "knock the hell out of them" in "every place where they have oil."
"They have great money because they have oil," Trump said.
"I would knock out the source of their wealth, the primary sources of their wealth, which is oil," he continued. "And in order to do that, you would have to put boots on the ground. I would knock the hell out of them, but I'd put a ring around it and I'd take the oil for our country."
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Trump's understanding of ISIS' finances doesn't seem to be very complete either. While ISIS does make millions of dollars from oil, the biggest slice of the group's budget most likely comes from taxing the people under its control. And this source of wealth is harder for international actors to control.
Analysts at the nonprofit RAND Corporation estimated that in 2014, ISIS raked in $600 million from extortion and taxation, $500 million in money stolen from Iraqi banks, and $100 million from oil.
The US has been targeting ISIS' oil revenues and donations from "overseas benefactors" in an effort to cripple the terror group, but that still leaves ISIS free to collect taxes, as The Wall Street Journal reported in June.
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More here:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/top-us-general-picked-apart-112300662.html