Monday, June 12, 2006
Bush hints at an Iraqi oil trust
President Bush and his staff are in the middle of a a two-day confab to "overhaul" the American strategy in Iraq. The wire story contains a hint of a suggestion that the United States might push Iraq to put its oil revenues into a trust, or something like it, for the benefit of the Iraqi people.
"The new government is going to have to figure out how best to lease the people's lands in a fair way," said Bush.
"My own view is that the government ought to use the oil as a way to unite the country and ought to think about having, you know, a tangible fund for the people so the people have faith in the central government," he said.
This is an idea that has been kicking around the blogosphere, and perhaps elsewhere, for more than three years. Glenn Reynolds first published an email from a reader with the suggestion before Saddam's statue came down in 2003, and has pushed the idea on several occasions since, as have other center/right bloggers. It took a long time to get this far and it may yet come to nothing, but it is a spectacularly original idea that could create a model for a post-corruption Middle East. Better late than never (and, by the way, it may not even be late).
2 Comments:
By 
Charlottesvillain, at
Tue Jun 13, 11:40:00 AM:
I don't get it. I thought the whole point of this war was so WE could get the oil.
By Dawnfire82, at
Tue Jun 13, 06:44:00 PM:
But it may not be profitable to do so. I imagine there's a good reason that all of Texas's refineries are concentrated along the Coast, rather than in northeast and central Texas where the big fields were; access to the ocean. If it proves to not be profitable to build a refinery in Anbar, they won't do it.
