The WSJ had a great front-page story on the Prestige oil spill yesterday. Remember how America got such a black eye from the Valdez spill? Remember how the Europeans have for years played up their "clean, green" attitude while hammering us for denying the ridiculous Kyoto protocol? Tragic, but ironic, what happened two weeks ago:

But sealing the badly damaged ship's fate, Spain refused to let a salvage team bring the Prestige into the bay or to tow it through Spanish waters to a port in Gibraltar. Portugal wouldn't allow the tanker within its territorial waters, either. Both countries dispatched navy warships to enforce their decisions, keeping the crippled Prestige in the roughest channels of the Atlantic Ocean.

Inevitably, the rough waters tore the ship apart. Neither country wanted to assist the troubled ship in any significant way, obviously fearing that they would end up "owning" the result. Instead of a minor oil leak from a fractured hull, we get a full hull breach and the massive spill that followed. How European.