Snarky:
Here is an interesting quote from the article Adler links to.


If the bulls have the upper hand, it's generally because supply and demand favor higher prices. The fundamentals of physical oil drive the psychology around paper oil more than vice versa.


Conservatives never learn. You might as well have said a couple of years ago:

"If the bulls have the upper hand, it's generally because of supply and demand favor higher prices. The fundamentals of the physical supply of housing drive the psychology around housing prices rather than vice versa."

Because in a conservative utopia, bubbles do not exist. The free market must be perfect at pricing. Government intervention or regulation is always wrong. Blah blah blah.

And no. There is no evidence that will convince conservatives otherwise. This is a matter of faith, not fact. You can have not one bubble, not two bubbles, but one hundred bubbles, and conservatives would be pretending that psychology in markets does not matter.

I will tell you what is always wrong. Conservatives and their reflexive hate American government first ideology.

McCain and Obama both agree that speculation in the oil markets is a problem. McCain and Obama are both right. Theory first conservatives with their head in the sand are wrong.
6.30.2008 9:26am
Ken Arromdee:
Because in a conservative utopia, bubbles do not exist. The free market must be perfect at pricing. Government intervention or regulation is always wrong. Blah blah blah.

You seem to have missed the word "generally", even though you quoted it, since that word means "it isn't a perfect description; there are exceptions".
6.30.2008 9:34am
Snarky:

You seem to have missed the word "generally", even though you quoted it, since that word means "it isn't a perfect description; there are exceptions".


Okay. Well, maybe with gas prices approaching $5 a gallon, we should look into whether this is an "exception."

By the way, the Great Depression was an "exception." So, even if something is an "exception" that doesn't mean it isn't damn important.

Murder is an "exception" to how people normally conduct themselves in society. It still calls for government intervention and regulation.

The Housing bubble "exception" is causing major economic dislocations as we speak.

I actually agree that in most instances, prices properly reflect supply and demand. But the exceptions are pretty damn important. I do not think that either Obama or McCain believe that prices do not "generally" reflect supply and demand.

Yet, somehow, the author takes himself as arguing for a different position...
6.30.2008 9:46am
Caliban Darklock (www):
As a conservative, I'd correct that slightly:

"Government intervention or regulation is usually worse than the alternative."

You just have to consider the alternative. The alternative to minimum wage is that a great many people will be simply unable to earn enough money for food and basic housing. The alternative to OSHA safety regulations is leaving a profit-driven entity in charge of "optimising" on-the-job injury and death rates.

The alternative to price controls is that prices go up.

In general, if people don't end up injured or dead, the government should probably STFU about it. I'll make a few concessions in the name of governmental self-preservation, which is a lot more than most conservatives will do, but I draw the line at trying to control the economy with legislation. You can't do it, and every time you try, it just makes things worse.
6.30.2008 10:12am
rarango (mail):
I don't think that all convervatives argue that bubbles don't exist--they do, in fact, exist--going at least as far back as the dutch tulip bubble some 400 plus years ago. The point is that the market--the thing that some liberals seem to fear--corrects those bubbles; perhaps not respecting the feeling of the "victims," but corrects the bubbles relatively quickly and efficiently. Folks like snarky can hope for the appropriate policy response from the congresscriters--I much prefer the market.

And as a conversative, I would submit the congress of the US (and other state legislatures and assorted lobbies) have played some significant role in the current state of energy policy, and thus enegy availability, in the United States.
6.30.2008 10:35am
Jiminy (mail):
How about instead of price controls we have regulation that mirror the regulation in the other parts of the market, like stocks &securities? Do we have margin trading at unsafe levels in the energy markets??
6.30.2008 10:42am
autolykos:

Because in a conservative utopia, bubbles do not exist. The free market must be perfect at pricing. Government intervention or regulation is always wrong. Blah blah blah.

And no. There is no evidence that will convince conservatives otherwise. This is a matter of faith, not fact. You can have not one bubble, not two bubbles, but one hundred bubbles, and conservatives would be pretending that psychology in markets does not matter.


Two words: physical settlement.
6.30.2008 10:44am
Snarky:

I draw the line at trying to control the economy with legislation.


Reasonable regulation to rein in oil speculators who are driving up gas prices far higher than is justified by supply and demand is not equivalent to "trying to control the economy"


In general, if people don't end up injured or dead, the government should probably STFU about it.


Based on this "principle" the government should not prosecute fraud, embezzlement, or theft among private parties. After all, no one ends up injured and dead.

Talk about a poorly thought out and articulate "principle."


You can't do it, and every time you try, it just makes things worse.


Because you said so. Because you prayed to your God one day, and he said, all such interventions shall do more harm than good.

Basically, this statement fits into my view of conservative economic "principles" perfectly.

It is all faith-based.

If you were more objective, you would understand that the details matter. That instead of being faith-based, one should consider things objectively and empirically. But, I guess it is so much easier to have all the answers based on faith. I wouldn't want to you to leave your comfort zone.
6.30.2008 10:48am
Snarky:

but corrects the bubbles relatively quickly and efficiently.


The current housing bubble has not settled "quickly" nor has it it settled "efficiently."

I for one do not consider it efficient when leaseholders are evicted from their homes before the end of their lease because their landlord flaked out on the mortgage.

If the "free market" is causing the current housing bubble to settle "efficiently" then the Soviet Union was also quite efficient at making cheese for its people. By that standard, there is no such thing as inefficiency.
6.30.2008 10:52am
rarango (mail):
and precisely how, Snarky would Congress correct the bubble relatively quickly and efficiently? As I said, if you think the legislature can solve the problem more quickly and efficiently than the market, go for it. I continue to prefer markets to legislation as a generaly rule.
6.30.2008 10:55am
Jiminy (mail):
Of course, another angle here is that the large speculators like pension funds and finance companies are the ones specifically driving the cost up about 30.00 per barrel or so. Now, that means that your securities are also doing better and returning higher as a result, and pushing those players our will have a clear effect on any investments or 401k accounts with any related holdings... Just a warning.
6.30.2008 11:05am
Snarky:

and precisely how, Snarky would Congress correct the bubble relatively quickly and efficiently?


Well, now that the oil has been spilled into the ocean, there is really no such thing as a quick and efficient clean up. Really.

But, what Congress should have done and should do in the future is put more regulations in place to discourage lending practices where the interest rate balloons in the future (perhaps by disadvantaging such arrangements in the tax code). People should be able to make their mortgage payments long-term with their current income, or they should buy a less expensive house. It does no good for housing buyers as a group to be bidding up the price of housing based on speculation concerning whether their future income will be high enough to meet future payment obligations or that alternatively one will be able to sell the house at a profit in an ever rising market.

I am sure that it is likely that other regulations would be justified. A blog comment is not the appropriate location to determine what, if any, regulations are justified. Note the "if any." That signals my commitment to an empirical approach that looks at the evidence, not a pre-commitment to some regulatory solution no matter what. I do not believe in faith-based political economy.


I continue to prefer markets to legislation as a generaly rule.


I continue to prefer empirical investigation to faith-based ideological prejudice, as a general rule.
6.30.2008 11:06am
Snarky:

Now, that means that your securities are also doing better and returning higher as a result, and pushing those players our will have a clear effect on any investments or 401k accounts with any related holdings... Just a warning.


We should not be concerned about losing zero sum transfers of wealth from oil consumers to speculators. It would be better if these pension funds and private equity companies were investing in productive activity which increases the size of the pie, not zero-sum speculation which merely is an attempt to get a bigger slice for these investors. (Also, at the cost of sending a huge slice of pie to our "friends" in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, who will the fund more radical Islam and terrorism.)
6.30.2008 11:10am
autolykos:

Reasonable regulation to rein in oil speculators who are driving up gas prices far higher than is justified by supply and demand is not equivalent to "trying to control the economy"


Is anyone claiming that oil speculators are driving up prices "far higher" than is justified by supply and demand? I think everyone who knows what they're talking about that's looked at the issue recognizes that the 2 primary drivers of prices are (1) the weak US dollar and (2) increases in global demand.


Of course, another angle here is that the large speculators like pension funds and finance companies are the ones specifically driving the cost up about 30.00 per barrel or so. Now, that means that your securities are also doing better and returning higher as a result, and pushing those players our will have a clear effect on any investments or 401k accounts with any related holdings... Just a warning.


Whoa, whoa, whoa. Is anyone claiming that speculation represents ~$30/barrel (that's almost half of the 12 month increase in price)?
6.30.2008 11:16am
rarango (mail):
Snarky: you clearly don't understand the difference between an expressed preference and empirical investigation--I never denied that empiricism was inappropriate, nor did I wrap my argument in mindless labels like "faith-based ideological prejudice." Since you can't argue without labels, any discussion with you is a waste of our respective times.
6.30.2008 11:23am
AnonLawStudent:

[W]hat Congress should have done and should do in the future is put more regulations in place to discourage lending practices.

That signals my commitment to an empirical approach that looks at the evidence, not a pre-commitment to some regulatory solution no matter what. I do not believe in faith-based political economy.

The obvious empirical response is that government frequently doesn't take into account the effect of its regulations; in many cases, no one knows because the knowledge of what will happen isn't there. For some empirical examples: (1) The Great Depression - triggered and then prolonged by reductions in money supply. We didn't understand the effect of money supply (and thus credit availability) on economic growth until Scwartz and Friedman published the Monetary History in 1963. (2) The S&L crisis in the 1980s - Failure to anticipate the effect of regulatory limits on deposit interest rates in a period of high inflation was a major cause of the S&L crisis. Not surprisingly, managers of insured S&Ls followed the economic incentives presented by opportunity for gain with no downside risk. (3) Recent Housing Bubble - to my knowledge, it hasn't been quantified as a percentage, but we do know that significant sums in absolute terms were lent so as to satisfy CRA requirements.

It's not that conservatives have blind faith in the market. We just know that it has historically been a far better processor of information - including information that no individual human recognizes - than ham-handed government attempts at economic regulation. It may not be "pretty" and it may "hurt," but it works. Counterargument?
6.30.2008 11:30am
Spitzer:
I like price controls; they allow the right sort of people, i.e. bureaucrats, lobbyists, lawyers, and politicans, to act as gatekeepers, determining who gets favored price treatment. Incidentally, this affords the gatekeepers the opportunity to exercise power, gain clients to fight that exercise of power, and generally dole out the patronage.

Price controls with commodities sold on the world market, like energy, can be a bit bumpy (especially since the world energy market has diversified magnificently since the 1970s) because, to attract the supply of sufficient quantities of commodities where the local consumer price is established by law at below-market levels, the government would have to make up the excess (as is the situation in many countries, see, e.g., India and Iran), which means that tax monies have to be diverted to pay the difference. COnsequently, consumers at large (qua taxpayers) end up paying world market prices.

The chief advantage of this system, from the perspective of the gatekeepers, is that classes of people favored by the tax code - that is, those who obtain government patronage - wind up paying less than market in reality for the products they consume, while the unwashed (i.e. unfavored) masses gain the opportunity indirectly to pay world market prices for the commodities they consume in addition to the difference between price-control and world-market prices for the commodities that the favored classes consume. As the value (i.e. potential benefit) for joining the "favored" classes rises, the cost of membership in the "favored" categories should increase (assuming the the law of supply and demand apply equally to the rent seeking market), and, best of all, all of the increase in "membership" cost goes to the gatekeepers.

Thus, the pure, unalloyed benefit of price controls is that the gatekeepers - the lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians - get bigger houses, better cars, and nicer vacations, all for the essentially painless prospect of indirectly raising taxes on the politically disfavored, while beguiling everyone, including the credulous unwashed and disfavored classes, into believing that they are benefitting from the policies.

As a fully-accredited member of the professional classes that stand most to benefit from price-control gatekeeping, I wholeheartedly encourage the government to introduce massive price controls to "help" the consume and further enrich my peer group.
6.30.2008 11:39am
Snarky:

We just know that it has historically been a far better processor of information - including information that no individual human recognizes - than ham-handed government attempts at economic regulation. Counterargument?


Exceptions matter. Externalities matter.

Most of the time, people's ordinary moral sense would restrain them from murdering each other. Most of the time, markets process information efficiently. What about when people's ordinary moral sense fails? What about when markets fail?

Further, it should be noted that it is not merely the processing of information that matters. It is also what you do with that information. Markets are amoral.

To a market, efficiency means providing Hugh Hefner with yet another lavish vacation while people in Africa increasingly die of Malaria, which is entirely preventable.

The point is that we should always ask whether markets are providing social goods adequately, not that we should deprive Mr. Hefner of another lavish vacation.


including information that no individual human recognizes


Now, this IS a faith-based statement that indicates that you do not understand how markets work. Markets do not work by magic. They work because individuals have an incentive to engage in arbitrage if the market misprices things.

Markets are a thoroughly human institutions.

One can argue that markets process more information than any single individual possibly could. And that would be undoubtedly true. But the idea that they have information that no individual has is truly faith-based. Garbage-In Garbage-Out.

I would like an example of this "information" that markets have that no individual has. I call bullshit.
6.30.2008 12:06pm
Snarky:

I think everyone who knows what they're talking about that's looked at the issue recognizes that the 2 primary drivers of prices are (1) the weak US dollar and (2) increases in global demand.


I would add (3) artificial restriction of supply, especially by OPEC, onto the list. Of course, there is also restriction of supply in terms of restrictions of drilling off the coasts and in ANWAR.

By the way, I personally would be for drilling in ANWAR and off the coasts. But only if reasonable but strict environmental restrictions were complied with. And only if the government bought 70% of the stock and received 70% of the profits in any venture that attempted to exploit those resources. We need to do something about the deficit.

At the end of the day, an increase in supply would pretty much destroy any speculative bubbles that have crept into the system.

We really should do something about OPEC. I favor lawsuits as a first step.
6.30.2008 12:12pm
Andy Freeman (mail):
> I for one do not consider it efficient when leaseholders are evicted from their homes before the end of their lease because their landlord flaked out on the mortgage.

It would be nice to have actual evidence of that occurring. I've seen a fair number of leases and none of them allowed such a thing.

In other news, your mortgage doesn't go into foreclosure if the note holder goes bankrupt.
6.30.2008 12:19pm
autolykos:

I would add (3) artificial restriction of supply, especially by OPEC, onto the list. Of course, there is also restriction of supply in terms of restrictions of drilling off the coasts and in ANWAR.


The artificial restriction of supply isn't a cause of the short term (last 12 month) increase.

It doesn't matter though, Spitzer wins the thread. Well played.
6.30.2008 12:22pm
Snarky:

The artificial restriction of supply isn't a cause of the short term (last 12 month) increase.


Yes it is. If supply were not artificially restricted, there would be a greater increase in quantity supplied in response to higher prices.
6.30.2008 12:26pm
Dan Weber (www):
I'm skeptical of the fact that "speculators" have driven up the price of oil, instead of just increased demand for a product with a slow-to-grow supply.

I think a speculator bubble is possible, but it does raise some specific questions: such as, how much more oil would America have consumed with $90-a-barrel oil (surely the US would've continued to increase its usage, rather than decreasing it), and where would the oil to satisfy this demand have come from?


Also, here's another thought experiment. Let's say Congress can pass a bill that destroys the speculation bubble, so that on the day it passes the bubble pops.

Clearly, the speculators will see it happening before the actual day Congress does pass that law, and will therefore abandon ship the previous day so as to not be left holding the bag.

Keep on iterating this back to today. While it's not assured that Congress is going to pass this legislation, there is a fairly good chance that they will.

What has been the market's reaction? To push the price even higher.

All we know for sure is that, if there are speculators, then they aren't scared at all by Congress's current blustering. It may be that they don't think Congress will actually act, but it's also seems likely that Congress's currently proposed remedies won't pop the bubble. They probably will have a lot of collateral damage for the businesses that use the futures market to hedge against uncertainties, though.
6.30.2008 12:44pm
AnonLawStudent:

Markets do not work by magic. They work because individuals have an incentive to engage in arbitrage if the market misprices things.

One can argue that markets process more information than any single individual possibly could. And that would be undoubtedly true. But the idea that they have information that no individual has is truly faith-based.

So, how many widgets should be produced, i.e., what is the demand for widgets? More widgets will be produced until demand is satisfied at the market clearing price; if too many are produced, production will likewise be reduced. Is the process perfectly smooth? No. Does it work, despite the absence of knowledge on the part of any individual human as to a critical piece of information, i.e., the precise point of market clearance? Yes. The "success" of humans at trying to ascertain supply-and-demand is illustrated by the "success" of five-year plans. Applied macroeconomically, the not-understood-at-the time collateral effects of the gold standard on trade and credit supply were cited by Friedman as an example in the Monetary History. Indeed, the utility and viability of the "invisible hand" have been readily accepted since, oh, about 1776 .

Markets are amoral. To a market, efficiency means providing Hugh Hefner with yet another lavish vacation while people in Africa increasingly die of Malaria, which is entirely preventable.

True. Maybe lots of people don't give a rat's a$$ about preventable malaria in Africa. But I guess government knows what is *moral,* regardless of what it's subjects actually want. On the other hand, the market provided solutions to malaria in the United States, but people with a specific concept of *morality* then used the power of government to force that morality on others and deny those same tools to Africa. But those people were *moral* and obviously *knew what was best.*
6.30.2008 12:56pm
autolykos:

Yes it is. If supply were not artificially restricted, there would be a greater increase in quantity supplied in response to higher prices.


In the long term, sure. In the short term, not so much. Oil supply doesn't pop up overnight. This stuff (especially offshore, oil shale, etc.) takes year of exploration and development. OPEC can increase their production (and to some extent they have), but they're subject to the same physical limitations the rest of the world is.
6.30.2008 1:00pm
jpe (mail):
No one's calling for price controls; people are calling for regulating markets through margin requirements, etc.

Mallaby's argument misses the point in spectacular fashion.
6.30.2008 1:50pm
jpe (mail):

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Is anyone claiming that speculation represents ~$30/barrel (that's almost half of the 12 month increase in price)?

Some people are, and almost w/o fail, they cite to the same source: a random finding of a committee chaired by Norm Coleman. Given the finder (not casting partisan aspersions, that it's a politician is enough), it should be taken with several beaches of grains of sand.
6.30.2008 1:55pm
Morat20 (mail):
Interesting post.

It only makes sense if you assume any "Regulation" and "price controls" are the same thing.

The Stock Market is regulated by the SEC, yet there are no price controls.

Various energy markets have experimented with greater or lesser amounts of regulation, with a lot of interesting results.

Taking a small subset of that, there's the way Texas deregulated their energy grid -- moving from state supervised monopolies to a competitive market. There's some fun information in there -- for one, Texas had a minor and rather overlooked provision mandating that all providers purchase power back at some specific fraction of the charged rate. Not sure who inserted that, but it's led to a boom in wind farms in West Texas, and apparently made the very utilities that wouldn't have bought that power very happy that they can now supply it to a bunch of other people very cheaply.

Competition really hasn't brought prices down too much -- ironically enough, the lowest prices in the state are in the few state markets wherein a state-operated utility still exists. Turns out everyone else is pricing khrs by the "highest cost to produce" (peak plant costs) and the state one is charging according to the bulk of power produced (cheaper "always on" plants) and adding in a small amount to cover peak costs.

I'm sure there's some economists getting fun papers out of that.
6.30.2008 3:00pm
Toby:
What is the actual inflation in ol costs for the last two years,in terms held constant by a market-basket of resources commonly traded on the world market? How much greater is the increase in the price of oil relative to the commodity basket increase?

In order, we have:

- the effects on world economic markets of below-inflation interest rates in the US. This drives world investors out of the dollar market, resulting in a glut of dolloars on the world market.Not surprisingly, this drives the price down.

- a Guns &Butter political strategy




















- Oil speculation.
6.30.2008 3:18pm
Smokey:
See Snarky's very first post for a prime example of psychological "projection":

...in a conservative utopia, bubbles do not exist... [cites, please?] ...conservatives would be pretending that psychology in markets does not matter...[economists of all stripes accept the obvious fact that psychology matters; ever hear the term "market sentiment?"] ...There is no evidence that will convince conservatives otherwise... [more projection; see the left's True Religious Belief in the repeatedly debunked/falsified AGW hypothesis] ...Conservatives and their reflexive hate American government first ideology... [As opposed to the Left and its rabid hate America ideology?]

See? Snarky's posts are absolutely filled with hatred -- and over a global economic situation, no less! But blind hatred effectively blinds the hater to reality.

From the article that Snarky likes to cite:
Administering the controls on energy alone... punished motorists with gas lines.
Sorry, pal, but this is what punished Americans with long gas lines in the 1970's: the Saudi royal family arbitrarily and without warning placed a total embargo on all oil exports to the U.S. That is what caused gas rationing, resulting in 5-gallon max fill-ups; gasoline rationed out on even or odd days only, according to your car's license number; and cars idling for hours, the lines snaking around the block and down the street -- with drivers often getting almost onto the station tarmac after a 2 - 3 hour wait, only to see an 'Out Of Gas' sign being put up.

When the Saudis embargoed its exports to the U.S., the price of gas went up between 300 - 400%, pretty much overnight; the same as it has this time, but this time the increase has taken place over the past few years. The difference this time is that there are no gas lines, because now there's no oil embargo. The situation was much more painful in the '70's, because the price increase happened much faster, and the nation's GDP was around $5 trillion, versus today's almost $15 trillion.

But somehow, Mr Projection still believes that everything must still be the fault of those ee-e-evil 'conservatives' -- with not a word about the environmental lobby that owns Congress lock, stock and barrel, and which has legally blocked American energy companies from even looking to see the amount of offshore reserves the country possesses -- because they do not want Americans to know about the tremendous oil reserves available to us.

Anyone who thinks market forces are the result of manipulation by a group he labels 'conservatives' certainly needs a reality check.
6.30.2008 3:34pm
Reasoner:
I'm surprised that nobody in this thread has mentioned what seems to me to be the real problem with the market in this situation. It looks like OPEC is using the threat of predatory pricing to maintain a sort of artificial monopoly on energy supplies.

When the oil prices skyrocketed in the seventies much money was invested in alternative energy sources. But then oil prices dropped so low that investors in alternatives lost their investments. For example it may be possible today to make a plant to convert coal to gasoline for a price much lower than current oil. But relatively few investors will be willing to invest millions in building such a plant only to have the Saudis increase production and cut the market out from under them.

If I were considering government regulation I would be looking at price minimums instead of just price maximums - in order to give competitors a chance. I expect locking in high oil prices might not be too popular among voters though.
6.30.2008 6:34pm
Snarky:

If I were considering government regulation I would be looking at price minimums instead of just price maximums - in order to give competitors a chance.


That is a very interesting point.
6.30.2008 8:58pm
Elliot123 (mail):
"But relatively few investors will be willing to invest millions in building such a plant only to have the Saudis increase production and cut the market out from under them."

The Saudis are constrained by the geology of their fields and the installed facilities. In the Nineties they moved from a sustainable capacity of 6 million to ten million. I think they are producing 9.8 million today. Now they are planning 12 million with the newer fields coming on stream. However, the Ghawar field, which has been the basis of their production is in decline, and it's far more difficult for them to bring on new fields than in the old days when they could simply increase Ghawar production.

They can push production above the sustainable limits, but doing so damages the reservoirs. They just don't have the managable margins they once did. Each time they increase production as they recently did, and the price continues to rise, they decrease their ability control the market by adding more production.

The last thing the Saudis want is $140 oil. If they could have stopped it, they would have done so long ago.
6.30.2008 9:01pm
Reasoner:
> [The Saudis] just don't have the managable margins they once did.

I'm not up on the latest info but my understanding is that while the peak oil theorists claim the Saudis can't produce much more than they are, the Saudis themselves claim to have plenty of oil reserves for decades to come. I would think that the high oil prices over the last few years would have given them time to ramp up if they could and they wanted to. But the real issue is whether those who would invest in alternatives THINK the Saudis can and will increase production when the alternatives come on line.
6.30.2008 10:40pm
TokyoTom (mail):
Spitzer, well said.

Just take a look at who's benefitting from the trillions being spent on Iraq and the "Long War" (in part for "energy security" reasons), and who's bearing the costs.
7.1.2008 1:07am
Ryan Waxx (mail):
Indeed, Tokyotom.

Look at the fat oil contracts that Iraq had given to France and Russia government oil companies and the subsequent interference they ran for the country in the U.N., thereby ensuring that the only way to get compliance with the U.N.'s own resolutions is by bypassing the cover that the wealthy oil clients were providing.

Oh wait, that's not the "who's benefitting" that you meant, is it? Because only Amerikkka is evil.
7.1.2008 8:22am
Smokey:
Yes, take a look at the foreign nationals, and foreign governments, that pocketed literally $billions in oil payoffs from Saddam. And these figures are only a tiny part of the Oil-For-Food bribes, which included, as Ryan Waxx points out above, long term preferential contracts to the very countries that were uber-obstructionist in Saddam's favor. Now, preach to us the UN/EU line about the 'long war.'
7.1.2008 6:56pm