Embarrassed by Putin, US Military FINALLY Targets Oil Truck Convoys Stealing Syrian Oil

by Scott Creighton

US stages some empty, driverless tankers for target practice after Putin embarrasses them on the world stage

Early in the morning of the second day of the G20 Summit meeting in Antalya, Turkey Russian President Vladamir Putin addressed the collected media in a 20 minute speech in which he discussed a number of issues including sanctions, the deal they offered the illegal government in Ukraine and the situation in Syria.

During that speech, Putin began talking about the illegal funding of the destabilization campaign in Iraq and Syria known as “ISIS” and he promised to expose the 40 nations he says their intelligence proves are funding that campaign.

Then he mentioned something else that is rarely discussed in polite political conversation when one speaks about Syria… the theft of Syrian oil and the fact that the US is doing nothing to stop it.

Putin also spoke of the urgent need to curb the illegal oil trade by IS.

“I’ve shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products,” he said.

“The motorcade of refueling vehicles stretched for dozens of kilometers, so that from a height of 4,000 to 5,000 meters they stretch beyond the horizon,” Putin added, comparing the convoy to gas and oil pipeline systems. RT

After this comment, the Pentagon propagandists leap into action to quickly stage a bombing of a bunch of empty, driverless trucks.

Yesterday, I wrote about this situation and showed how our “friends in the region”, the Kurds, are the primary recipient of this stolen oil and I showed they are selling it to Israel at an extremely reduced price. Israel is getting about 3/4 of the oil they need to run their country from the Barzani Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan and they are getting much of their supply from those very tanker trucks Vladamir Putin was talking about.

“The crude is transported by tankers to Jordan via Anbar province, to Iran via Kurdistan, to Turkey via Mosul, to Syria’s local market and to the Kurdistan region of Iraq, where most of it gets refined locally,” Khatteeb explained. Oilprice.com

Israel has bought as much as three-quarters of its oil from Iraqi Kurdistan in recent months, the Financial Times reported Sunday.

According to the report, which cited shipping data, trading sources and satellite tanker tracking, Israeli refineries and oil firms have imported more than 19 million barrels of Kurdish oil over the course of three months, from the beginning of May to August 11. Haaretz

So as you can see, this could be a very sticky situation for the US, Iraqi Kurdistan and Israel with regards to being caught red-handed, stealing oil from Syria. As anyone can see from any conflict map of Syria, “ISIS” tends to focus on targets in the country that either produce or transport oil, which, when viewed in this particular context, might expose what some would call a “motive” for the regime change operation itself. If nothing else, it demonstrates the worse kind of war-profiteering: the plundering of a targeted nation’s national resources for profits.

Later on Monday, after Putin made his comment to the press that morning, a Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis held a little press conference of his own during which he claimed the United States had suddenly changed their policy toward all those massive convoys of “ISIS” oil tankers leaving Syria with the stolen oil on board.

Remember, this stolen oil is supposedly what funds “ISIS” and has been funding them and their war of aggression for years.

In a new twist to an intensifying campaign to squeeze Islamic State oil revenues, U.S. warplanes have destroyed 116 oil-hauling trucks in eastern Syria that were a key part of a smuggling operation that brings the group an estimated $1.4 million a day.

The series of strikes conducted Sunday and announced Monday was the first of their kind in more than a year of U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria. Four A-10 Thunderbolt II attack planes and two AC-130 Spectre gunships pounded the trucks as they clustered near Abu Kamal, a town close to the Iraqi border.

U.S. officials previously had said they avoided attacking fuel trucks out of concern for civilian casualties. AP

Clearly this announcement coming right on the heels of Putin’s statement is not a coincidence.

The claim made by Capt. Davis was not accompanied by corroborating photos of the strikes. If photos do appear sometime in the future, chances are they would have been taking sometime AFTER Putin’s comments and BEFORE the Pentagon presser.

Interestingly, and possibly very telling, is this little gem Capt. Davis mentioned in his press conference:

Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said that in an effort to warn the truck drivers to leave the area in advance of Sunday’s attacks, leaflets were dropped and coalition planes conducted low-level “show of force” flights over the site. AP

Right. According to the Pentagon themselves, the “ISIS” truck drivers were warned in advance of the attack and allowed to leave the scene… leaving only the empty tankers in the location.

So what happened really?

1. Putin embarrassed the US military and promised to expose them for facilitating “ISIS” oil shipments into Iraqi Kurdistan (and eventually, onward to Israel)
2. Pentagon leadership panicked and came up with a plan
3. They parked a relatively small number of these tanker trucks in a congested tangle somewhere near the Syria/Iraq border
4. They had the drivers leave the scene
5. And they called in some bombers to blow up the empty, driverless vehicles as a show of sorts.
6. They rushed a spokesman to a podium and announced their “new” program of attacking these massive convoys of “ISIS” oil tankers.

That’s not hard to understand is it? Seems pretty obvious to me and it should to anyone at the AP or Reuters reporting on this announcement from the Pentagon. But alas…

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