Anyone who thinks that Iraqi oil really belongs to the Iraqi people must be living in dreamland...

Have you seen the map of where the oil is ? Almost all iraqi oil is in a small part of the kurdish territory in the north east. Thats why saddam couldn't let them go. The rest of iraq would be penniless.

So if we are people of principle, what is the principle?

Apparently you are proposing:
"any underground resource belongs rightfully to the people who have lived longest on top of it"

I don't quite see why, but lets leave that and look if its practical and logical.

Lets imagine that all the oil in the world is under one field, belonging to one family. Can they hold the whole world to ransom, even if they never found it themselves, could never have refined or utilised it ? Well, lets say they can.

Now - who do they share this gigantically desirable ownership with ? All their known relatives ? The rest of the village ? The rest of the district, most of whom they have never met ? The racial group to which they belong ? The nation state in which they are situated (maybe against their will) ? The whole human race ? All species on the planet ?

If you were arguing for the whole human race, I could accept you as a man of principle. Arguing for any smaller grouping involves arbitrary decisions which seem to involve no principle at all - unless you say no sharing whatever, which might be logical, but is appalling to me.

What this means is that sharing this "originator" benefit is going to be some sort of practical fudge unless we declare it as belonging equally to all the people of earth.

But there is a different question, and I think it is the one that matters here. On what principle will the actual enjoyment of being the end-user of the resource be based ? Who gets to use the oil ?

To be specific, we have one group of people in the world (mostly the USA) who are using a hugely disproportionate amount of the available oil. This has leveraged them into huge advantages, like enough buying power to buy most of the rest, or enough military power to take it. And doing either will leverage them up some more.

What in hell do we do about THIS ?

Without waving a magic wand and creating a perfect equal-shares-for-all world, which honestly no-one knows how to do, and history tells us would go horribly wrong if we tried.

I don't know. Do you ?

This thred is proving to be subtly intresting.
As a result of the imperialist/facistic agenda of resource appropriation, it seems that the questions arising from the issues of ownership and control of these resources are being asked, alongside basic questions of ethics and morality.
This surely must be a gigantic shot in the foot for those oil crazed zionazies, who hate all questions directed at their continual 'rights' to our resources and the poisonous methods they use to extract paper[electronic] wealth from them.
We are at war with these select few remember, a constant infomation war, where they will appropriate every medium to murder and distort the message that they number less than 25 000 [about 500 families] and yet control nearly half of all the real wealth [land, resources, capital investments] and significantly more of the less real wealth [money, metals, stocks and bonds], whilst maintaining the falsehood of nations as protection for their activities.
In this infomation war our weapons are truth and the ability to ask meaningful, resonant, questions that cut to the chase and put these shadowy masters in the light to squirm.
So far in this thred, there have been these questions, and we must all learn from each others questions good or bad. I appreciate and thank you all.

Iraqis will ultimately determine how the oil is pumped out. It makes no difference what we think.
I'm pretty sure that the disgust at the brazen imperialism of the USA, coupled with the knowledge that USA used up all its resources, will make them resist any foreign control,and if they do somehow retain controle of the fields, they will produce far below what they would otherwise be able to on a daily basis.
Also, terrorists are now seeing how dependent on middle east the oil market is, and over the next decades will make it their sole target.
War and military occupation won't stop what's going to happen

That's very cryptic, asdf.
What on earth do you mean ?
Surely in an Iraq overrun and ruled by the US for the next twenty years (say) very little on matters of oil would be decided by iraqis. To bring this about is the main purpose of US aggression.
Can you expand, please ? It doesn't make sense to me.
Surely down all the ages one of the main aims and results of imperialist aggression has been to take control of natural resources, and this was hugely successful?