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Originally Posted by Madelaine Amee
It is a mess of gigantic proportions and, in my opinion, was caused by our greed for their OIL. I am very glad I don't have to make the decisions about how to handle it. Al Qaeda were bad enough, now these crazies appear ...............
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OUR" "greed for their OIL"???
How Guns and Oil Net ISIS $1 Million Per Day
"Every startup needs financing and a market to succeed. So, too, for the Islamist extremist group ISIS—or simply the Islamic State, as it calls itself—whose fighters stormed across the Syrian border into Iraq in June and seized the country’s second-biggest city, Mosul, before moving on to the outskirts of Baghdad.
Now ISIS, an outgrowth of the U.S. military’s deadly Sunni foes in Iraq a decade ago, is the tycoon of the jihadi world. Having taken over oilfields in war-torn northeastern Syria last year and reportedly earned tens of millions selling antiquities, it landed a giant infusion of cash by seizing about $425 million from a Mosul bank.
But ISIS’s real upside lies in exploiting one precious commodity: oil. The group nabbed three more fields in Iraq, tapping into pipelines and looting oil storage facilities in its new territory. Then it filled trucks and sold crude for the cut-rate price of $26 a barrel to Iraqi traders, who resold it to Kurdish smugglers at a 100% markup.
ISIS quickly developed its smugglers’ network—to which it now sells about 100 truckfuls of oil daily for around $9,000 each—netting nearly $1 million a day, according to truckers and officials who detailed the bonanza to the industry newsletter Iraq Oil Report. Not bad for a group with just about 10,000 fighters. Said one Kurdish intelligence officer: “This is a very profitable business.”
How guns and oil net ISIS $1 million a day - Fortune
It seems to me that OUR presence and protection of Iraq's oil fields would have prevented ISIS from becoming so well funded!