More get-out-the-Security-Council-vote efforts, Dubya style:

Showing its exasperation with Russia's growing defiance of U.S. war plans, the United States on Wednesday resorted to economic blackmail and warned Russia that it risks jeopardizing its bid to join the World Trade Organization if it vetoes a UN Security Council resolution.

Russia also risks having to endure the continued humiliation of Soviet-era U.S. trade restrictions and being locked out of a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, said a senior U.S. diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity in an interview Wednesday.

Which moves Sean-Paul Kelly to comment that:

This is quite possibly the stupidest thing the administration could do. (Full disclosure: I am married to a Russian.) Hurting Putin in this way will only embolden his domestic critics, especially when election are just around the corner.

You know, I've thought several times myself that these guys had done the stupidest thing they could possibly do. And they keep proving me wrong...