[coconutt2000]

Kind of like two arguments from our own past...

The assumption of the colonial debts, and the establishment of the central bank.

[aculeus]

If he means paying all citizens dividends from oil income (similar to the system used in Alaska) the suggestion is absolutely brilliant.

If every Iraqi adult received cash from oil production just imagine their reaction to any faction that favored bombing oil facilities.

[CBart95]

AH! THE PUZZEL PIECE!

oil

A shaky (or better "sheiky") new government without binding federal power and no compelling incentives to participate.
For now,the iron fist stays in the velvet glove.
Withdrawl? Not anytime soon.

[Alberta's Child]

He has bucked some of his Shiite and Kurdish allies by insisting that ultimate control of Iraq's natural wealth must remain in the hands of the central government, while also suggesting constitutional language that the wealth be owned by all Iraqis in "equal measure." ...[O]il would be managed by the central government in the interests of all Iraqis wherever they live, but not owned by it.

This is Chalabi's desperate attempt to make chicken soup out of chicken sh!t, for he knows that this idiotic exercise in "nation-building" is destined to fail unless he can figure out a way to basically bribe all the various factions in Iraq to ratify the new constitution.

[wildbill]

Why not privatize the oil into a couple of competing companies and give each Iraqi citizen a one-time distribution of x shares of stock.

Every citizen and thier heirs would share in the profits. Wouldn't help finance the government, but they could establish a tax system for that. I suspect that every Iraqi would then be a little more careful about the way the government is run.

[usurper]

If they give equal shares of stock or equal dividends to all Iraqis it could lead to a population explosion.