Former acting CIA director Michael Morell said President Obama's concern about the environment has prompted him not to attack oil facilities controlled by the Islamic State. These oil facilities are the major source of income for the Islamic State to fund its terrorist activities not only in the Middle East, but around the world.
CHARLIE ROSE: How do we attack that, rather than retaking territory, attack the funding that they have, attack the ability to sell the oil? We've seen attacks on that oil transfer taking place now after Paris that didn't take place before Paris which is your original question.
MORELL: Right. This is one of the collateral damage questions, right? So prior to Paris, there seemed to be a judgment and I don't sit in the room anymore there seemed to have been a judgment 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 to destroy that infrastructure.
ROSE: So we hit oil and trucks.
MORELL: So now we're hitting oil and 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.
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