Hal vs SLB

[ricochetboy]

Brian, You are correct, the absolute performance of HAL may be a result of improvements in the oil services sector.

Therefore, it is interesting to compare the Haliburton to the gold standard of oil services SLB, over the last 5 years.
This may require downloading the Yahoo charts program.

http://finance.yahoo.com/charts#chart3:symbol=hal;range=20020910,20070911;compare=slb;charttype=line;crosshair=on;logscale=on;source=realtime

or

http://tinyurl.com/2mm754
Looking at a chart of HAL vs SlB , both major oil services companies is enlightening. Notice tha HAL greatly outperformed SLB until late 2005 and that SLB closed the gap between November 2006 and today. SLB is a notoriously honest company.

Add that observation to my favorite Warren Buffett line, Nobody knows who is swimming naked until the tide goes out.

The gap reached it's apex roughly around the apex of republican political hegemony, and rapidly closed after the november 2006 elections. The tide had gone out for the Cheney boyz.

Financial reporting, as you must know more than I, is an art as much as science. Those expert in the art of deception, or painting the proper picture are handsomly rewarded. Only if the tide goes out will the regulators go after the artists, especially if the offending company is well connected. There are a million and one ways that profits and losses can be distributed throughout a company and its various subsidiaries or co conspirators, er I mean contractors. If you believe that Haliburton's financials are a sincere reflection of the true distribution of gains and losses within every division of the company,especially from 2003 to early 2006 then maybe I can interest you in a nice picture of the Brooklyn Bridge. The rapid narrowing of the gap may be a reflection that HAL boyz figured that with the Dems sniffing around it was time to try to clean up the act.

Markets don't lie over the long term.

[brian]

Good points, Phil.

I can play the Halliburton "oh my God I'm not making any net income" game using GAAP myself.

Consider this simple scenario. You run a taxi company that uses a single Rolls Royce. You pay yourself a salary of $50,000 per year, and you buy the $200,000 Rolls with a five-year interest-free 100% loan.

If you depreciate the value of the Rolls over the useful life of the car (say, 10 years), here's how your GAAP "profitability" might look like:

Sales: $100,000
Less COGS (including salary): $50,000
Less Depreciation/Amortization on the Rolls: $40,000

Total net income: $10,000 (or 10% profitability ratio on a 50% gross margin).
Assuming all cash is paid when services are rendered, your company has $10,000 in cash flow for the year (i.e. $10K more than it started with).

Now, let's assume that the IRS allows you to depreciate the car over three years instead -- a bit of creative accounting. For the same exact year:

Sales: 100,000
Less COGS (including salary): $50,000
Less Depreciation/Amortization on the Rolls: $66,666.67

Net LOSS of $16,666.67 -- without a single change to your operation! You still were cash-flow positive to the tune of $10K, but you can go caterwauling to the public about how you're "losing money" when in reality, you're making it. You're still paying the exact same amount on the five year loan, you simply accelerated the amortization schedule.

Let's get even more creative (as large services companies like Halliburton often are) and assume that the year after you buy your Rolls, Rolls releases a brand new model. Thus, you declare that your car is "obsolete" and write off its whole value in a single year. It looks like this:

Sales: $100,000
Less COGS/Salary: $50,000
Less Amortization of the Rolls: $200,000

OMG! You've got a MASSIVE "net loss" of $150,000 or 150% of sales! But you're still paying your loan for 5 years, are still using the car to make money, and are no different -- financially -- than you were in scenario 1 where you did a writedown over the term of the loan.

Heck, if you change the standard to a writedown over the *useful life* of the car, you'll show eye-popping profitability assuming it lasts for 10 years and not 5 (it is a Rolls, after all).

Depending on your situation, you can then spin this amortization schedule however you want it. If you want your bankers to be impressed at your net profit, amortize over the longest time period the law will allow (although most of them still look at cash flow, not net income, to decide what you can handle). If you want to paint a "crisis" or "hardship scenario" in the media, write off the car over a 1 or 2 year period with a legal rationale and then scream to the rafters about your tiny or negative profit margins and how you're hardly staying in business.

That's all smoke and mirrors. Over time, of course, it will even out (you'll post much higher profits in later years when amortization is complete, or smaller ones in the future if you stretch out the amortization schedule). . . the important thing is that no matter how quickly you write down the asset value, your operation produced $10,000 in cash flow for the year -- i.e. "made" $10K.

That's the measure that most smart analysts (and lenders) look at when evaluating major corporations -- the statement of cash flows found in the consolidated 10-K. As I showed earlier, "profit-poor" Halliburton managed to take its "struggling low margin" Iraq logistics business and produce over $1 billion in consolidated cash flow the last two years despite posting "net income" of less than 1/4 that amount. Looks like they're amortizing the Rolls in a couple of years' time.

Cheers,

Brian

Philip Berg <philip@...> wrote:
Brian, You are correct, the absolute performance of HAL may be a result of improvements in the oil services sector.
  
Therefore, it is interesting to compare the Haliburton to the gold standard of oil services SLB, over the last 5 years.
This may require downloading the Yahoo charts program.
  
http://finance.yahoo.com/charts#chart3:symbol=hal;range=20020910,20070911;compare=slb;charttype=line;crosshair=on;logscale=on;source=realtime
  
or
  
http://tinyurl.com/2mm754
Looking at a chart of HAL vs SlB , both major oil services companies is enlightening. Notice tha HAL greatly outperformed SLB until late 2005 and that SLB closed the gap between November 2006 and today. SLB is a notoriously honest company.
  
Add that observation to my favorite Warren Buffett line, Nobody knows who is swimming naked until the tide goes out.
  
The gap reached it's apex roughly around the apex of republican political hegemony, and rapidly closed after the november 2006 elections. The tide had gone out for the Cheney boyz.
  
Financial reporting, as you must know more than I, is an art as much as science. Those expert in the art of deception, or painting the proper picture are handsomly rewarded. Only if the tide goes out will the regulators go after the artists, especially if the offending company is well connected. There are a million and one ways that profits and losses can be distributed throughout a company and its various subsidiaries or co conspirators, er I mean contractors. If you believe that Haliburton's financials are a sincere reflection of the true distribution of gains and losses within every division of the company,especially from 2003 to early 2006 then maybe I can interest you in a nice picture of the Brooklyn Bridge. The rapid narrowing of the gap may be a reflection that HAL boyz figured that with the Dems sniffing around it was time to try to clean up the act.
  
  Markets don't lie over the long term.

[brianholtz1965]

Phil Berg wrote:

PB) Brian, You are correct, the absolute performance of HAL may be a result
of improvements in the oil services sector. (PB

Thank you.

PB) Therefore, it is interesting to compare the Haliburton to the gold
standard of oil services SLB, over the last 5 years.
http://tinyurl.com/2mm754 Looking at a chart of HAL vs SlB , both major oil
services companies is enlightening. Notice tha HAL greatly outperformed SLB
until late 2005 and that SLB closed the gap between November 2006 and
today. [...] SLB is a notoriously honest company.(PB

The HAL advantage over SLB in your graph was built up between the beginning
of your graph (Sep 2002) and the Iraq invasion (Mar 20, 2003). If you
graph the two stocks since the day of the invasion
(http://tinyurl.com/2daty7), they are almost a mirror of each other until
Apr 2007. Thank you for giving me inter-company comparative data that
rebuts Mr. Miller's claims about HAL's equity run-up far better than I could
by citing more figures from Halliburton's annual reports.

PB) The gap reached it's apex roughly around the apex of republican
political hegemony, and rapidly closed after the november 2006 elections.
The tide had gone out for the Cheney boyz. (PB

Look at the graph for HAL and its top three competitors starting Nov 1 2006:
http://tinyurl.com/ysdb54. The alleged negative differential impact of the
election on HAL seems to be a figment of your imagination.

PB) There are a million and one ways that profits and losses can be
distributed throughout a company (PB

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand-waving.

Brian Miller wrote:

BM) If you're not going to read and respond to what I actually wrote about
net income versus EBITDA versus cash flow, and just keep parroting "net
income" numbers, I'm not going to be keen on continuing this discussion,
since it's obvious that my POV isn't even being considered. (BM

This from the guy who ignored my distinction of Halliburton profit margin on
Iraq operations versus all operations overall.

BM) If you'd like to respond to my post's specific examination of cash flow
and discussion of how creative amortization and depreciation can depress
"net income" while still providing cash flow (BM

Lots of things "can" happen. I'm interested in evidence of what DID happen.
I've cited mine. What was yours?

BM) As I showed earlier, "profit-poor" Halliburton managed to take its
"struggling low margin" Iraq logistics business and produce over $1 billion
in consolidated cash flow the last two years despite posting "net income" of
less than 1/4 that amount. (BM

When did you show that? All I noticed were assumptions that the
improvements in Halliburton's balance sheet since the invasion must have
come from its Iraq operations -- while the price of oil was climbing from
$30/barrel to $60/barrel. Click on the other HAL competitors BHI and NOV in
the upper left of the first chart I linked above. The share prices of all
four companies are in virtual lockstep since Mar 20 2003. Did all four of
these firms have multi-billion-dollar Iraq operations?

As Phil said, "Markets don't lie over the long term". I believe in
relatively efficient markets. If you think you see in Halliburton's
financial statements evidence that it has mis-stated its source of profits,
then that would not have escaped the attention of Wall Street analysts, and
would be common knowledge, reflected in analysts' reports about HAL. Can
you cite such claims in any such analyses? If you think you've found such
evidence of mis-stated profits, I challenge you to enter it at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halliburton and see if it can withstand the
scrutiny of the Wikipedia community.

Mike Denny wrote:

MD) Please don't put words in my mouth. I didn't say any of the things you
suggest below. (MD

Huh? The message you quote from me names "Brian Miller" and "Phil Berg" as
the authors of the comments I was answering. Your name was nowhere in my
entire email.

MD) All I said is that Halliburton has a financial incentive to use their
political muscle to shape policy in the region to their benefit. And.the
problems in the region have certainly raised the cost of doing business for
everyone and raised the price of oil. That could mean that political
problems in the region may be a contributing factor to the profits of
Halliburton and others. Having private businesses that can profit from
political problems of their own making directly involved in shaping foreign
policy is not a good thing in my opinion. That's all. Would you disagree
with that statement? (MD

You assume facts not in evidence. You've offered no argument that
Halliburton had sufficient "political muscle" to cause America to invade
Iraq -- let alone to keep Saddam from refusing weapons inspections and
precipitating his own death sentence along with the deaths of his sons. I
want facts -- not campfire stories about the Cheney boyz and other bogeymen.

Making unsubstantiated charges against the enemies of freedom only helps
immunize them from the piles of substantiated charges we need to press
against them. Aren't there enough bad things that Bush and Cheney brag that
they've done, for us to be able to oppose them on that alone? They stand
convicted out of their own mouths. Me, I don't need any conspiracy theories
to make the case against Bush and Cheney. Do you?

[michael]

Sorry Brian....my mistake.

You said... You assume facts not in evidence. You've offered no
argument that Halliburton had sufficient "political muscle" to cause
America to invade Iraq -- let alone to keep Saddam from refusing weapons
inspections and precipitating his own death sentence along with the
deaths of his sons. I want facts -- not campfire stories about the
Cheney boyz and other bogeymen.

Mike: No one really knows the facts yet...and I don't either. All I'm
saying is that there appears to be the potential for a major conflict of
interests, that there was plenty of money on the table and that the
parties did in fact reap considerable benefit. And if having Cheney/Bush
in the government wasn't the "political muscle"...then I don't know what
is...but I won't claim to know everything...just that the air stinks.
And by the way...Halliberton is small potatoes relative to the likes of
the many others who actively lobby and influence government policy as it
pertains to projects that directly benefit them. This is true in many
areas of government and not just the Iraq connection we have been
focusing on. And the influence as we can easily see in other areas as
well moves the government's attentions to areas the benefit focused
special interests and away from the interests of the people...always
has...always will.

Brian Holtz said:

BH) Please cite your evidence for any country in my list that American
military intervention didn't aid the cause of local democratic
sovereignty there. (BH

MD) I'll concede the Carlyle issue...but that's about it. Without some
clear idea about what you mean by democracy gaining ground thanks to our
military interventions in that list of nations...we'll just have to
leave that as an ill-defined statement and an unsubstantiated claim (MD

I'm content to note that you declined my request, and to leave it to our
audience to recognize whether American military intervention promoted
local democratic sovereignty in places like, say, Vichy France.

Mike: Well actually Brian, let the record show that I expressed an
interest in learning more about your views on the potential benefits of
government intervention in other countries and you named the countries.
You suggested your positions were thoroughly documented on your website
from previous related discussions and sent those reading these posts to
the site. I went to the site looking for the details that supported your
position about the situations in these countries. When I didn't find
anything there regarding your claim...I asked you to show me where I
might find the information. Your reply was BH) Please cite your evidence
for any country in my list that American military intervention didn't
aid the cause of local democratic sovereignty there. (BH

Brian...if you are looking for sparing partners so you can muscle up for
your big political race....then please find someone else to do it with.
If you decide you want explain yourself to someone who took your word
and offered to reconsider a position based on your claims only to have
you push it back in their face...then I'll be happy to pick up the ball
with you again down the road.

Happy Sparing!

Mike

[ricochetboy]

Brian H said:If you graph the two stocks since the day of the invasion (http://tinyurl.com/2daty7), they are almost a mirror of each other until Apr 2007.

No they are not. look at the right hand axis. SLB is up 400 percent in that time and HAl 250 percent. SLB waay outperformed HAL during that period and the period leading up to the election. As I said, the market is a discounting mechanism for future events. Clearly both are participating the oil services boom, but something is holding HALs relative performance back. Could it be it's hands have been removed from the cookie jar. Oh, I know your reply. They have done a terrific job with the war contracts and now they finished all the work in a sterling fashion. Yeah, yeah ,yeah.

[brianholtz1965]

Phil Berg wrote

BH) If you graph the two stocks since the day of the invasion
(http://tinyurl.com/2daty7), they are almost a mirror of each other until
Apr 2007. (BH

PB) No they are not. look at the right hand axis. SLB is up 400 percent in
that time and HAl 250 percent. (PB

WRONG. I said "Apr 2007", and you're looking at the data for now -- early
September. The figures for April are roughly 275 to 220.

PB) SLB waay outperformed HAL during that period and the period leading up
to the election. (PB

Huh? From Mar 20 2003 to Nov 6 2006, the two graphs are in virtual
lockstep for the entire 3.5 years, and end up in almost the same place:
about 230 for SLB vs about 205 for HAL. During that 3.5-yr span, the only
significant period of divergence was in the last half of 2005, but the two
graphs are pretty much back in sync for the 11 months of 2006 preceding the
November election.

I'm sorry, Phil, but your credibility is now shot. You're entitled to your
own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts. I invite anyone to
look at the graph linked above and tell me he disagrees with how I describe
it.

PB) The gap reached it's apex roughly around the apex of republican
political hegemony, and rapidly closed after the november 2006 elections.
The tide had gone out for the Cheney boyz. (PB

PB) As I said, the market is a discounting mechanism for future events. (PB

No, what you said was: "The gap reached it's apex roughly around the apex of
republican political hegemony, and rapidly closed after the november 2006
elections. The tide had gone out for the Cheney boyz." However, the fact is
that the two stocks's post-invasion performance continued to track each
other relatively closely from Nov 2006 until Apr 2007, and did not
decisively diverge until May 2007. I guess it took Wall Street half a year
to hear about the election results.

PB) Oh, I know your reply. They have done a terrific job with the war
contracts and now they finished all the work in a sterling fashion. Yeah,
yeah ,yeah. (PB

Keep fantasizing -- and thank you for this inadvertent insight about what
you need to think I believe in order to rationalize our disagreement. From
what little I've heard, there have been serious questions about
Halliburton's performance. However, I don't claim to know the facts about
Halliburton's performance -- and I'm not going to make up my own facts on
the matter.

[brianholtz1965]

Mike Denny wrote:

MD) Sorry Brian..my mistake. (MD

No problem -- I'm a little bit outnumbered here, but that makes it easy to
figure out which arguments are aimed at me, since I'm on the pointy end of
anything I didn't write.

MD) there appears to be the potential for a major conflict of interests,
that there was plenty of money on the table and that the parties did in fact
reap considerable benefit. (MD

What's in evidence at this point is that the available profits in play in
the Halliburton contracts in Iraq are running roughly $100M/yr. The Cato
Institute says <http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa390.pdf&gt; the energy industry
was getting more than $6B/yr in outright subsidies as of 1998, and that was
before Bush's $14B energy bill of 2005. I totally buy the idea that the
$14B 2005 energy bill had a primary motivation of giving even more billions
of dollars of outright subsidies to Bush Administration cronies in the
energy industry than they already get. I totally buy the idea that a
primary motivation of Bush's Medicare prescription drug benefit was to
subsidize donors in the pharmaceutical industry. But it's just strikes me
as reality-impaired to suggest that the $500B invasion and occupation of
Iraq had a primary motivation of generating a few hundred million in profits
for Halliburton.

MD) And if having Cheney/Bush in the government wasn't the "political
muscle".then I don't know what is ... but I won't claim to know everything
...just that the air stinks. (MD

Again, my advice is to check your premises about where all the relevant
smells are coming from, and to take a look at who has an interest in getting
you to believe what you believe. For example, see the factcheck.org article
Kerry Ad Falsely <http://www.factcheck.org/article261.html&gt; Accuses Cheney
on Halliburton. Did you know that Halliburton was receiving so-called
"no-bid" contracts under President Clinton? Did you know that the Harvard
professor who was Clinton's procurement policy chief defends
<Harvard Kennedy School | Harvard Kennedy School

Halliburton? Did you know that Dan Briody, Halliburton critic and

author of The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money, writes
"Whether Dick Cheney had a hand in doling out contracts to his former
company is unimportant, not to mention unprovable. Everyone in the industry
and the military, with few exceptions, agrees that Halliburton was the right
company for the job in Iraq because of its experience and the speed with
which it was able to operate." If most or all of this is news to you, as my
information about Carlyle apparently was, then shouldn't you want to audit
the ways you get your information about such matters?

MD) It would be easier to understand the premise of the value of foreign
intervention if there were good examples of where this foreign policy has
actually worked (MD

BH) My standard list of places where America has used its military for the
goal of local democratic sovereignty includes: England, Italy, France,
Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Greece, Germany,
Austria, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Kurdistan,
Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. [...] I examined the ideology
and psychology of libertarian anti-war absolutism in my recent article for
California Freedom: Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos . (BH

MD) Please show me where in your blog it discusses how our military
activities in these countries have "benefited the goal of local democratic
sovereignty". (MD

BH) I don't debate basic facts of history. Please cite your evidence for any
country in my list that American military intervention didn't aid the cause
of local democratic sovereignty there. (BH

MD) Without some clear idea about what you mean by democracy gaining ground
thanks to our military interventions in that list of nations, we'll just
have to leave that as an ill-defined statement and an unsubstantiated claim.
(MD

BH) I'm content to note that you declined my request, and to leave it to our
audience to recognize whether American military intervention promoted local
democratic sovereignty in places like, say, Vichy France. (BH

MD) Well actually Brian, let the record show that I expressed an interest in
learning more about your views on the potential benefits of government
intervention in other countries and you named the countries. You suggested
your positions were thoroughly documented on your website from previous
related discussions and sent those reading these posts to the site. (MD

That's simply false. I've painstakingly restored the context of our
discussion above. I NEVER told you in this discussion that my website
"thoroughly documented" any of the examples on my list. Again, I'm not
going to "document" for you how America liberated France from Germany.
Instead, I'm going to say that the basic evidence of history is so
overwhelmingly on my side that I'm willing to defend the weakest example you
care to cherry-pick from my list above (excluding Haiti after you raised the
bar from "goal" to "benefited").

It takes you about 20 seconds to make an inaccurate claim from imperfect
memory about what the "record shows", and it takes me about 20 minutes to go
back and dig up the message excerpts that document your error. The cause of
Truth is not well served by this asymmetry of effort. Please be more
careful when you make claims about what the "record shows" about what I've
said.

MD) if you are looking for sparing partners so you can muscle up for your
big political race..then please find someone else to do it with. (MD

I have no power to make you dispute my assertions here. Forgive me if I've
misread you, but when you ask me for details about how America advanced the
cause of local popular sovereignty in France in 1944, I pretty much
interpret that request as dilatory and perhaps disingenuous. Maybe I'm
missing something here?

MD) If you decide you want explain yourself to someone who took your word
and offered to reconsider a position based on your claims only to have you
push it back in their face. (MD

I just assume that you're familiar with the basic facts of U.S. military
intervention in the nations I listed. I'm happy to stipulate without even
reviewing them that the relevant Wikipedia articles cover the basic facts
about what America did and what the first-order consequences were. However,
I'm not really interested in a big history debate here. I would be content
for us to agree that reasonable Libertarians can disagree on whether there
were factual predicates for believing that America could overthrow Saddam at
acceptable risk-adjusted cost. I think that what I've said and pointed to
here adds up to a prima facie case that a reasonable Libertarian might think
so, and I believe I've rebutted every substantive argument presented here
against that case.

[michael]

Thanks Brian...as this thread winds down I'd have a few thoughts to
share about the exchange. First, it's safe and accurate to say you
effectively identified the bias of this list and called it to our
attention. And you made it clear biases aren't the same as facts. You
were also able to use the facts very effectively in the discussion while
being quadruple teamed. :>)

I resolve to take this lesson to heart and remember that my biases are
not facts and to be more careful about how I communicate. For this I
thank you for the time and effort you expended in the discussion.

However...I personally don't think you made your case that US government
military intervention overseas has consistently benefited democracy or
even done so most of the time despite your criteria of "good
intentions". So with that...the net result is that I will remain open to
the idea that surgical government military intervention may be a tool in
political arsenal, but that it must be very, very carefully applied and
only under very well considered and restrained situations which remain
to be seen and explored. As to whether this was the case in Iraq and the
middle east and if it was effective...my view is that it was none of
these things...but I remain open to the idea that the people involved
did have good intentions until there's some hard evidence to suggest
otherwise. I do however remain grateful to Lafayette for bringing his
fleet to the aid of the American Revolutionaries and hold that as an
example of a military intervention that was (at least for a while) a
good thing for democracy and the US. So I guess that's an example that
supports your case.

For those reading who remember recent posts where there was some "bad
blood"...In my view this exchange with Brian was one where there were
obviously clear intellectual and emotional differences of opinion
between the parties involved but it never degenerated...and there was
ample apologizing from all sides when mistakes were made...the mark of a
truly classy discussion if you ask me.

Brian...thanks again for taking the time to engage the list in a
stimulating and educational conversation. Let's do it again soon...:>)

Mike

[dredelstein]

Mike D.,

You wrote:
I will remain open to the idea that surgical government military intervention may be a tool in political arsenal, but that it must be very, very carefully applied and only under very well considered and restrained situations

Have you considered:
1. such intervention would be financed with immoral means?
2. a response from the targeted Govt may lead to war and war is the health of the state?
3. the perverse incentives acting on the Govt rule out these descriptors: "carefully applied" "well considered" "restrained" "surgical"?

Best, Michael

[michael]

Thanks Michael...yes I have.

Mike

[dredelstein]

Then why did you recommend it? And why did you use those non-applicable descriptors?

Best, Michael

[michael]

Did I recommend it? I thought I was just remaining open to considering
it in a particular situation and noted one where it seemed to work. But
I believe that's the only situation that comes to mind at the moment.

As we know...politics is like sausage making....not pretty. If I wanted
to focus on morality...I wouldn't do it primarily within the context of
politics as that is dirty business by its nature...even at the
Libertarian Anarcho-Capitalist level if you ask me.

Mike

[brianholtz1965]

Mike Denny wrote:

MD) it's safe and accurate to say you effectively identified the bias of
this list and called it to our attention. And you made it clear biases
aren't the same as facts. You were also able to use the facts very
effectively in the discussion while being quadruple teamed. :>) (MD

I see only one team here -- Libertarians.

MD) I resolve to take this lesson to heart and remember that my biases are
not facts and to be more careful about how I communicate. For this I thank
you for the time and effort you expended in the discussion. However.I
personally don't think you made your case that US government military
intervention overseas has consistently benefited democracy or even done so
most of the time despite your criteria of "good intentions". (MD

If that's true, then the contrary case here was widely assumed but even
farther from being made. I remain content for us to agree that reasonable
Libertarians can disagree on whether there were factual predicates for
believing that America could overthrow Saddam at acceptable risk-adjusted
cost. I still think that what I've said and pointed to here adds up to a
prima facie case that a reasonable Libertarian might think so, and my
records show I've answered every substantive argument presented here against
that case.

MD) For those reading who remember recent posts where there was some "bad
blood". In my view this exchange with Brian was one where there were
obviously clear intellectual and emotional differences of opinion between
the parties involved but it never degenerated.and there was ample
apologizing from all sides when mistakes were made.the mark of a truly
classy discussion if you ask me. (MD

The LPSF in my experience has long been a font of high-quality debate, and
recent incidents show that it only takes one less-than-classy newcomer to
make discussion degenerate.

Michael Edelstein wrote to Mike Denny:

ME) Have you considered:
1. such intervention would be financed with immoral means? (ME

See Is Taxation <http://marketliberal.org/PlatComWiki/Is_Taxation_Theft%3F>
Theft?

ME) 2. a response from the targeted Govt may lead to war and war is the
health of the state? (ME

Aversion to war is the health of the tyrant.
Give me liberty or give me peace.
Dueling aphorisms are no substitute for reasoned discourse.

ME) 3. the perverse incentives acting on the Govt rule out these
descriptors: "carefully applied" "well considered" "restrained" "surgical"?
(ME

"Rule out" constitutes an overstated case to which I've already enumerated
what a reasonable Libertarian could believe are multiple counter-examples.