Flashback November 23, 2015: Mike Morell, former deputy chief of the Central Intelligence Agency under President Obama, says the Administration didn’t want to bomb ISIS oil production because of the ‘collateral damage’ it would have caused to the environment. Morell: “[W]e didn’t go after oil wells, actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls, because we didn’t want to do environmental damage… So those are the kinds of tough decisions you have to make.”
MIKE MORELL: “So this is one of the collateral damage questions, right? So prior to Paris, there seemed to be a judgement, right, I don’t sit in the the Sit room anymore, but there seems to be– there seemed to have been a judgement that look we don’t want to destroy these oil tankers because that’s infrastructure that’s going to be necessary to support the people when ISIS isn’t there anymore, and it’s going to create environmental damage, and we didn’t go after oil wells, actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls, because we didn’t want to do environmental damage, and we didn’t want destroy that infrastructure, right?
CHARLIE ROSE: “So we hit oil on the trucks.”
MORELL: “So, now we’re hitting oil on the trucks, right? And, maybe you get to the point where you say we have to also hit oil wells. So those are the kind of tough decisions you have to make.”
Charlie Rose Show
11/23/2015
